CATHERINE PUGH RESIGNS FROM BALTIMORE MAYOR’S POST (CORRUPTION SCANDAL):
BALTIMORE & ATL - DRAIN THE SWAMP.
MOST BLACK POLITICIANS USE THEIR EDUCATION & POWER AS A WEAPON AGAINST BLACK VOTERS.
HOW DOES THIS ABUSE OF POWER HELP STRENGTHEN BLACK COMMUNITIES?
BLACK VOTERS DESERVE MUCH BETTER LEADERSHIP.
YES, WHITE POLITICIANS CAN EFFECTIVELY LEAD BLACK VOTERS WITHOUT RACISM.
2020 ELECTION
Post Sources: CBS News, Fox News, NY Times, Washington Post, Youtube
****** Baltimore’s Mayor, Catherine Pugh, Resigns Amid Children’s Book Scandal
After weeks of mounting pressure, Mayor Catherine Pugh of Baltimore resigned on Thursday amid a widening scandal involving hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of children’s books that she wrote and sold to the University of Maryland Medical System while serving on its board of directors.
Her resignation comes days after the Baltimore City Council proposed amending the city charter to make it possible to remove her, and after the F.B.I. raided her two homes and her office at City Hall.
Ms. Pugh stepped down from the hospital network’s board, but she had resisted calls to step down as mayor.
She has been home on medical leave for weeks. Her lawyer told reporters previously that she was too ill to make decisions.
Bernard Young, president of the Baltimore City Council, has been serving as acting mayor and will complete the rest of her term.
“I am sorry for the harm that I have caused to the image of Baltimore and the credibility of the office of the mayor,” Ms. Pugh said in a statement read aloud by her lawyer, Steve Silverman, at a brief news conference that she did not attend. “Baltimore deserves a mayor who can move our great city forward.”
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, who appoints the board of the University of Maryland Medical System, applauded Ms. Pugh’s resignation in a post on Twitter.
“This was the right decision, as it was clear the mayor could no longer lead effectively,” he wrote. “The federal and state investigations must and will continue to uncover the facts.”
Ms. Pugh has been under intense scrutiny since March, when The Baltimore Sun reported that she was one of nine members of the board of the University of Maryland Medical System who had profited personally from contracts with the hospital system.
When the scandal broke, Ms. Pugh maintained that there was nothing illegal or unethical about her deal to sell her “Healthy Holly” children’s books, which promote nutritious food and exercise, to the hospital network, whose board she has served on since 2001.
The network, in turn, was supposed to donate the books to Baltimore schools and day cares.
She apologized for failing to report the deal on disclosure forms when she was a state senator and returned the most recent payment of $100,000.
But questions continued to swirl over who authorized the contract and how many of the books actually reached children, especially after thousands of books were discovered untouched in a school warehouse.
Ms. Pugh has received $500,000 since 2011 from the medical system for the books.
Other entities, including Kaiser Permanente, reportedly paid her an additional $190,000 for the books.
“This whole entire episode has been hurtful to the city,” said Jill Carter, a state senator representing Baltimore who has been pushing to limit self-dealing on the hospital network’s board. “Those of us who are holding elected office now, it is incumbent upon us to do everything in our power to restore the public trust.”
Ms. Carter said she began investigating the hospital network’s contracts after hearing complaints from minority-owned businesses that it was impossible for them to bid on contracts, while politically connected board members received lucrative deals that did not go through normal channels of procurement.
Ms. Carter noted that other board members reaped far more from the hospital network, including Francis X. Kelly, who advocated the privatization of the hospital network as a state senator, and went on to obtain $16 million in contracts through his insurance company, Kelly & Associates Insurance Group.
“It’s been very troubling to me that so much focus has been placed on the mayor that there has been too little scrutiny and too little desire to investigate the other members,” Ms. Carter said.
The hospital network’s website lists Mr. Kelly as being “on leave” from the board, along with three other members who had business contracts.
He did not return a call seeking comment Thursday.
A recent bill passed by Maryland’s General Assembly will replace the medical system’s entire board in July, and generally prohibits future board members from receiving no-bid contracts.
Michael Schwartzberg, a spokesman for the medical system’s management, said it would not be issuing a statement on the mayor’s resignation.
Ms. Pugh, who was elected mayor in 2016, has long been a fixture in the city’s politics.
She previously served as a state senator and majority leader in Maryland’s General Assembly.
Her resignation comes after a series of other corruption scandals in the city have shaken faith in Baltimore’s government.
Last year, six Baltimore police officers pleaded guilty in a wide-ranging corruption trial that included robbing a motorist of $25,000 and dumping garbage bags full of stolen prescription drugs on the market.
The city, which endured riots and unrest in the wake of the 2015 death in police custody of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man, has seen four police commissioners cycle through since Mr. Gray’s death.
Last year, former police commissioner Darryl De Sousa pleaded guilty in federal court to failing to file income tax returns.
In 2010, another Baltimore mayor, Sheila Ann Dixon, resigned after being found guilty of misappropriating gift cards for the poor.
Joanne Antoine, executive director of Common Cause Maryland, a nonpartisan watchdog organization, said her group has received several calls from people expressing a loss of faith in Ms. Pugh.
But Ms. Antoine said she is heartened by recent proposals brought by Baltimore City Council members to tighten ethics disclosure rules and make it easier to remove the mayor.
“I think we’re on the verge of recovering from all of this,” she said. “We believe the City Council is taking steps to move forward.”
Video that went viral over the weekend shows an officer punching a man multiple times and then tackling him
A Baltimore police officer caught on video repeatedly punching a man has quit the force, police said.
The Baltimore police department said on Twitter late Sunday night that the interim commissioner, Gary Tuggle, accepted the resignation of the officer involved in the incident.
“This remains an active criminal investigation,” the department said.
Video that surfaced online and went viral over the weekend shows an officer punching the man around the head multiple times and then tackling him.
The city has not identified the officer, but a lawyer for the man who was punched told the Baltimore Sun the officer was Arthur Williams.
A second officer involved in the run-in has been placed on administrative duty pending the outcome of an investigation, according to the department.
“I am deeply concerned by the conduct I witnessed today,” Tuggle said in a statement on Saturday. “I have zero tolerance for behavior like I witnessed on the video today. Officers have a responsibility and duty to control their emotions in the most stressful of situations.”
According to police, the incident happened around 11.45am on Saturday when two officers approached the man, who one of the officers “was familiar with”, for reasons that were not spelled out. They released him, and then approached him again to provide a citizens contact sheet, a form city cops are required to fill out after interactions with residents.
Things escalated after the man declined to provide identification, the department’s account says.
Video shows the man and one of the officers exchanging heated words before the confrontation turns physical, with the cop punching the man repeatedly before he falls to the ground, where the officer continues to throw punches and jumps on top of him.
The officer who threw the punches, who has been with the department for about a year, was suspended with pay before he resigned.
The man who was beaten was released from custody and was not charged with any crime.
The man, named as Dashawn McGrier, 26, had a previous run-in with Williams in June, and was at that time charged with assaulting the officer and other offenses, his lawyer, Warren Brown, told the Baltimore Sun. The lawyer said he was unfairly targeted in both incidents and was taken to the hospital for injuries suffered on Saturday.
“It seems like this officer had just decided that Dashawn was going to be his punching bag,” Brown said. “And this was a brutal attack.”
JOHN CONYERS IGNORED CLUES IT WAS TIME TO LEAVE OFFICE GRACEFULLY:
GOOD POLITICIANS KNOW HOW TO GET ELECTED & KNOW WHEN IT'S TIME TO LEAVE.
JOHN CONYERS' CONGRESS SEAT IS NOT A MONARCHY:
HIS SEAT BELONGS TO ALL MICHIGAN VOTERS NOT THE CONYERS' FAMILY.
TERM LIMITS
TERM LIMITS
TERM LIMITS
Sources: Politico, CNN, Fox News, Washington Post, YouTube
***** John Conyers Was An Icon. Then He Lost His Way.
It’s time to reckon with the legacy of a man who saw so much and stayed too long.
When, in that brief pillow of time between the Kennedy assassination and the escalation of the war in Vietnam, a 35-year-old John Conyers first ran for Congress, he had a method of connecting with voters—“a pet theory of personality projection,” Simeon Baker wrote in a 1965 profile in Ebony magazine: “Using his good looks as bait and charm as the sticking power, [Conyers] wooed women to support him.” “Sex appeal,” oozed a photo caption in the accompanying spread, was the bachelor’s “greatest asset in winning women’s votes.”
It’s indicative of the era in which the piece was written that Ebony framed Conyers’ political support among women this way despite the fact that the few women Baker includes in the story don’t seem to agree with the depiction. “Sure, he’s good-looking,” said one female supporter, but “what converted him into a winning candidate was his ability to make people feel important.”
“He became a symbol of the new middle-class Negro,” Baker wrote. “He vowed to represent people who are caught between the VIP class of Negro life and the lower class which is dependent on relief, low-income housing, and welfare.”
That John Conyers burned out a long time ago. And this week, any hope that something of the steady glow of a pilot light remained has been extinguished. On Tuesday morning, on the friendly airwaves of a Detroit radio station, Conyers resigned in disgrace following accusations from half a dozen women alleging various forms of sexual harassment, unwanted touching, assault—and the revelation, first reported by BuzzFeed, that his office used taxpayer money to try and cover it up.
It is an ignoble and overdue end to what has been, by any measure, a momentous public life. Conyers’ service in Congress has spanned 10 presidencies and 52 years—he’s been in the House for more than one-fifth of the entire existence of the U.S. Congress. In 1964, he went to Jim Crow Mississippi during Freedom Summer and offered legal representation to black voting-rights activists; one year later, he supported the Voting Rights Act as a member of House of Representatives. He was the only congressman ever endorsed by Martin Luther King Jr., and was a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus. Rosa Parks worked as an aide to him for 23 years. He introduced single-payer health-care legislation long before Bernie Sanders claimed “Medicare for All” as his own. He served on the Judiciary Committee during the Watergate hearings, and was one of the original 20 names on President Richard Nixon’s “enemies list.” He was the top Democrat on the committee two decades later, when a president was impeached for the first time since Reconstruction. He was still on the committee a decade after that, when the nation elected its first black president—another young black attorney whose appeal was, in no small part, his ability to make people feel like they too were part of something larger than themselves. All of this is why House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi called him an “icon” even as she was trying to nudge him into retirement.
Yet even as many black Detroiters saw Conyers as their champion against the elite and powerful few, Conyers—or, perhaps more accurately, those he surrounded himself with—sought to entrench themselves in the VIP class he once scorned. There can be no doubt that Conyers’ ordeal is of his own making—the accusations against him are serious and profoundly disturbing. But the political fallout from his surprising, bizarre nosedive off the national stage this week throws new light on the actions of those he’s depended on for decades, and whose influence has skyrocketed as old age has ravaged him. And in their slipshod attempts to build a Conyers dynasty, they’ve diminished the man who would be its patriarch.
The highlights of Conyers’ long career are, by now, somewhat familiar. But less known, at least nationally, are the lows.
There are, at age 88, natural questions about his mental state; he sometimes seemed confused in House proceedings, and even when he joined Mildred Gaddis’ morning show to resign on Tuesday, the host essentially had to remind him why he’d called in. For decades, the non compos mentis question has hung over Conyers—there was an incident in the early 1990s when he was supposedly found in the very early morning standing in the middle of Livernois Avenue in Detroit, barefoot and waving at cars. It was reportedly routine for staff members to find him in various states of undress—“his closet is in his office,” his former communications director explained to CNN—and at least one former staffer has alleged he showed up to a meeting clad only in underwear. Knowing this, there’s the inevitable question of why his inner circle wouldn’t step in as stewards. The answer, perhaps, is that they were too invested in his success.
There’s his bizarre relationship with his decades-younger wife, Monica, a roving tempest prone to Trumpian outbursts. The couple married in 1990—she’d been an intern in his office a year earlier—when the congressman was 61 and his bride was 25. From the beginning, the couple were dogged by rumors that their's was a marriage of convenience, or that one party was simply taking advantage of the other. Initially, at least, nobody seemed sure who was taking advantage of whom.
In 2005, Monica Conyers was elected to Detroit’s city council largely on the strength of her husband’s name. Her tenure in public office was memorable for its volatility. There was the time she threatened to shoot an aide to the mayor of Detroit; the time she had to be restrained during a city council meeting after an argument broke out and she made fun of another council member’s need for a hearing aid; the time she petulantly addressed city council president Ken Cockrel Jr. as “Shrek,” a “Li'l Marco”-esque jab at Cockrel’s gleaming bald pate and prominent ears; and her encore, a televised argument with an eighth-graderover whether this was or was not an appropriate way for a role model to act.
More damning were her crimes. In 2009, she pleaded guilty to federal charges that she’d accepted bribes from a wastewater-treatment contractor—making her the first Conyers forced from office. Though she’d later try, unsuccessfully, to withdraw her guilty plea, she was sentenced to three years in federal prison. After serving two, she was released into a halfway house, and in 2015, filed for divorce from the congressman, which apparently didn’t take; the couple renewed their vowsin 2016.
Last week, amid a glut of reporting on the assault and harassment allegations against her husband, Monica, once a mainstay of metro Detroit’s nighttime news broadcasts, emerged from the couple’s family home in the city’s University District/Palmer Park neighborhood to ask, angrily and rhetorically, whether the reporters outside would “go and stalk white people’s houses,” or whether “you just come to the black neighborhoods and stalk our houses?”
As the public face of her embattled husband over the past few weeks, she was joined by Sam Riddle, a Detroit political consultant and huckster known throughout the metro region for his attention-grabbing stints on local news shows—and of course, for his role as a top aide to Monica Conyers, where he helped facilitate bribes that landed Conyers in prison. For years, Riddle “seemed to play the role of Clyde Barrow to Monica Conyers’ Bonnie Parker,” Pulitzer-winning journalist Charlie Le Duff wrote in his book, “Detroit: An Autopsy.” In Riddle’s own trial on the bribery charges, federal prosecutors offered a wiretapped 2007 call in which Councilwoman Conyers told Riddle, “You’d better get my loot.” Faced with prosecution in 2009, Monica said she regretted working with Riddle: “If I was smart, I would have listened to my husband, and he never would have worked for me.”
To Michigan politicos, there’s another reason why Riddle’s re-emergence amid the sad coda of Conyers’ career is a flummoxing twist of events, especially given the very specific accusations the congressman has faced: In 2010, Riddle was sentenced to two years in prison after being found guilty of felonious assault and a gun crime after pulling a shotgun on his girlfriend during a domestic dispute. The mind strains to imagine a rationale for hiring someone with such a background to act as your “family spokesperson” under any circumstance, let alone when you’re facing allegations that you’ve assaulted women.
Across Detroit, there are still a great many people who see in Conyers a man who fights for them, a lion in winter. At a hastily organized rally on Monday, a cavalcade of black Detroit’s leaders came out to voice their unwavering support for him. The Rev. Wendell Anthony, the longtime head of Detroit’s chapter of the NAACP, spoke for many when he questioned why Conyers was being held to a different standard than other national politicians accused of sex crimes: “[I]f we’re going to raise this unholy and unlawful guillotine, calling for the head of John Conyers, then in fairness we must begin with the president of the United States.” “For those in the U.S. Congress to call for his resignation is shameful,” thundered Wayne County Executive Warren Evans as Riddle stood behind him. “Until we know what happened, I can’t fathom why a [Nancy] Pelosi or a [Michigan Congressman Dan] Kildee would ask for the resignation of a man who has not been given due process.”
It wasn’t all supposed to end this way. For more than a year, it was an open secret that when Conyers left office, he would be replaced by his great-nephew Ian, a sitting state senator from Detroit. In recent weeks, as the elder Conyers first voiced his intent to retire at the end of his current term, Ian’s candidacy became a surer and surer thing, culminating in the younger Conyers telling the New York Times in a Tuesday morning scoop that the congressman was going to announce his retirement and that he, Ian, was launching a congressional campaign.
The news jolted Detroit. And it led an irate Monica Conyers, the self-appointed carrier of the torch, to hatch a sloppily arranged change to the succession plan—one in which she would play a central role instead of being pushed aside.
On Tuesday, as John Conyers resigned, he stunned observers by endorsing his and Monica’s son, John Conyers III, as his successor. Conyers III, a 27-year-old who has never held elected office, is no stranger to controversy and comes pre-loaded with his own political scandal.
In 2010, he reported two laptops and $27,000 in concert tickets were stolen from a Cadillac Escalade he’d apparently been using for personal purposes despite the fact that its lease was registered to his father’s congressional office and was being paid with taxpayer money. Other photos online showed Conyers III, then 20, seated behind the wheel of the Cadillac while holding a bottle of Moët. More recently, NBC News reports that on Feb. 15, 2017, Conyers III was arrested in Los Angeles on suspicion of domestic violence; his girlfriend called law enforcement after he, in the words of the police report, “body slammed her on the bed and then on the floor where he pinned her down and spit on her,” before allegedly swinging a knife at her and cutting her arm.
His mother’s intervention sets up the spectacle of a free-for-all primary in which at least two members of the Conyers family seem intent to run.
In a since-deleted tweet, Ian Conyers suggested that Conyers III’s candidacy wasn’t the former congressman’s true wish, and, by name, pinned the credit/blame for the endorsement as someone else’s preference: “Monica - I spoke to my great uncle Thursday night via phone from hospital. His advice Run!”
The fight over John Conyers’ legacy will not end soon, perhaps not even in our lifetimes. But to some degree, its demise comes from the liberalism Conyers championed over more than a half-century—the belief that we can use our collective power to repair the wrongs of the past.
Conservatism has long had a posture that favors standing athwart history yelling stop, a belief in preserving the old way of doing things, standing up for tradition, living up to the nation’s past glories, working to make America great again. Liberalism isn’t so much about restoring the way things used to be as it is about overcoming history. And it’s because of this—and the forward march of progress—that what is acceptable to one generation of Democrats is no longer acceptable to another.
The present always stands in judgment of the past, and one generation’s liberal heroes become another’s problematic figures. Woodrow Wilson was a visionary idealist who sought to make the world safe for democracy—until he was remembered as a racist reactionary with Lost Cause sympathies.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the man who lifted the nation from the depths of the Great Depression, fought the powerful and moneyed, and expanded the scope of what we believed government could and should do—until the exclusion of black Americans from the New Deal and the internment of Japanese-Americans became stains on his legacy.
We now find ourselves in the middle of such a reckoning, as the sins of the past catch up to the reputations of the present.
Al Franken was the progressive intellectual with a scathing wit, the left’s answer to bloviating talk radio on the right—and he’s also a man accused of forcing himself on at least seven women.
Bill Clinton was The Natural, the man from Hope who charted a course for a new type of Democrat, oversaw an economy that gained 23 million new jobs, balanced the budget and built a bridge to the 21st century—and he’s also preyed on women, with errant sexual behavior ranging from the consensual-but-inappropriate (as with the Lewinsky affair) to charges of harassment (as with Paula Jones) and accusations of rape (as with Juanita Broaddrick).
John Conyers was a civil-rights hero, a voice in the wilderness who advocated far-left positions before they were fashionable, a champion for Detroiters—especially black Detroiters—who felt and still feel locked out of the room where decisions get made.
But whatever else he was, Conyers is also the man Courtney Morse says propositioned her when she was an intern, who after his advances were rebuffed, raised the specter of Chandra Levy; the man Elissa Grubbs says groped her in a church and regularly undressed in front of female staff; the man Marion Brown saysstroked her legs, propositioned her in a hotel room and “violated” her body.
And where once those abuses wouldn’t have been career-ending, today, people are starting to listen to what women are saying.
“He made people … believe in their own strength,” a Conyers campaign aide told Ebony in 1965. “He … showed them the value of sticking together.”
And that’s exactly what his accusers have done.
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****** John Conyers could be replaced by his son — who has his dad's name but not his political resume
The son of Rep. John Conyers Jr. — the embattled congressman who announced his sudden retirement Tuesday — may be headed for his father’s seat, carrying on a decades-long political dynasty in Michigan.
Conyers (D-Mich.) resigned Tuesday amid allegations of sexual harassment.
In doing so, the erstwhile dean of the House endorsed his eldest son, John Conyers III, to take his place representing Michigan’s 13th Congressional District — even though the 27-year-old has never run for political office.
Tuesday evening in a statement posted on Twitter the younger Conyers said that he had not decided whether to enter the race but hoped “to come to a decision by the new year — once I have taken the time to thoroughly listen to our community.”
Conyers was one of his father’s fiercest defenders as the 88-year-old faced increasing pressure from Democratic leaders to step aside when a growing number of female former aides accused him of mistreatment and unwanted advances.
“It’s very unfortunate to see him fight so long for so many people and to automatically have the allegations assumed to be true,” John Conyers III told reporters last week, according to NBC affiliate WDIV. “And of course, with sexual assault, women are to be believed. But in this instance, he has no history of this.
“And I think that if we’re not going to make [Sen.] Al Franken resign when we have evidence of him groping a woman while she was asleep … it’s disconcerting to me to see the way my father is being treated after he’s given so much to this country, not just for black people but for people alike.”
Of his father, he added: “He fights for everyone.”
Here’s what we know about John Conyers III.
He lacks political experience
Steve Hood, a political consultant in Detroit, told the Detroit Free Press that not much is known about Conyers, at least in political circles.
Conyers is from Detroit and attended Morehouse College as well as New York University, according to his contributor bio on HuffPost.
That bio, whose details The Washington Post has not yet confirmed, identifies Conyers as “a partner at Detroit’s first minority run hedge fund” and “a seasoned multi-discipline consultant who has provided fundraising and social media services to both political and business clients.” It also says he served as an intern in the Department of Community Outreach in the Israeli Embassy in Washington. “John is committed to melding community engagement, entertainment and politics,” the bio states.
According to his Facebook page, Conyers is a managing partner at the Detroit hedge fund EIA Alpha Partners Fund Management and an owner/partner at Palette Agency in Los Angeles.
He caused public headaches for his father in 2010
In 2010, MLive.com reported that John Conyers III was cited for speeding in his father’s Cadillac Escalade — or rather, the government-leased vehicle his father used as a member of Congress.
There were also reports that year that the younger Conyers had driven the vehicle to a rap concert and that it was broken into, according to the news site. The then-20-year-old reported to policethat two laptops had been stolen from the Escalade, along with tens of thousands of dollars worth of concert tickets.
After the incident, the elder Conyers apologized.
“I have just learned about the inappropriate use of a congressional vehicle by my son over the Thanksgiving holiday,” he said in a statement at the time, according MLive.com. “I am sorry it happened and will make sure that it does not happen again.”
The Detroit Free Press reported that the congressman said he reimbursed the Treasury Department more than $5,600 for his son’s unofficial use of taxpayer money.
A photo on social media at the time showed his son in a Cadillac with a bottle of French champagne, according to an MLive.com article. The story’s headline: “The fabulous online life of John Conyers III, or why his family needs to do damage control immediately.”
He’s an opinionated writer
In a HuffPost op-ed, under the headline “Orange Watergate: The Inevitable Impeachment of the 45th President,” Conyers wrote that the “reactionary and cavalier nature of the president will ultimately be his down fall.
“As his approval ratings tumble and confidence wanes, expect the weight of possible impeachment to make his already poor decision making worse. Self-preservation is ultimately the downfall of the narcissist.”
In the wake of the mass shooting in Las Vegas, Conyers wrote that the national debate should be about gun control, not mental illness, explaining: “I have dealt with Major Depressive Disorder since I was 15 years-old. I’ve not once thought about murder. I know right from wrong.
“My friends with bi-polar and depression and multiple personality disorder don’t think about hurting others, if anything we think about hurting ourselves.”
“So if you grapple with mental illness do not let the medias stigmatization of our ailments make you self-conscious,” he wrote in his October op-ed. “As much as they love to make us their scapegoats, It’s not our fault. You, as well as I, know we know right from wrong. When they need someone to blame they look to us first, when it’s time to lend their hand to help us they’re nowhere to be found.”
He’s a rapper
In a 2013 song, “Rich Glorious,” Conyers talked about his battles with the media amid his mother’s 2012 bribery conviction, as well as the Cadillac mishap, according to Roll Call.
“Hey f— making a living, boy, I’m trying to make history. So picture me letting the news nitpick at me,” Conyers said in the rap video, which showed an image from a news story about the incident.
He’s not the only Conyers vying for the congressional seat
State Sen. Ian Conyers, John Conyers Jr.’s great-nephew, has declared his intention to run in the special election.
Ian Conyers, who represents the 4th district in the state senate, graduated from Georgetown University with a bachelor’s degree in government and a master’s in urban and regional planning, according to his biography.
He worked for then-District Mayor Adrian Fenty, who appointed Conyers as a community outreach and service specialist in Ward 6, according to his LinkedIn profile.
In 2012, Conyers served as a regional field director for President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign, according to his online resume.
Four years later, the political operative became a politician, winning a special election to replace former state Sen. Virgil Smith. He later told Georgetown’s alumni newsletter: “We dispelled the myth that seniors and middle-aged voters don’t believe in young people.”
After John Conyers Jr. endorsed his own son for his seat, Ian Conyers told the Free Press he was surprised, saying: “I didn’t expect him to make an endorsement.”
Hood, the political consultant, described it as “a family in disarray.”
“You have the potential for two Conyers to go for the seat,” he told the newspaper.
He isn’t guaranteed the seat
Political insiders say the seat does not belong to anyone — a Conyers or not.
“There’s no guarantee that anyone named Conyers is going to be the next congressman representing Detroit,” said Sam Riddle, political director for the Michigan branch of the National Action Network. “We are on the verge of the biggest free-for-all politically you’ve ever seen in Detroit. There should not be an automatic ascension to that congressional seat because your last name is Conyers. The people in Detroit deserve the best candidate possible be elected to that seat represents poorest and blackest city.”
~ Former national security adviser says he is cooperating with special counsel probe
Former national-security adviser Mike Flynn pleaded guilty Friday to lying to federal investigators about his calls with the Russian ambassador and other issues and said he is cooperating with prosecutors, a sign that the special counsel’s inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 election is reaching deeper into President Donald Trump’s inner circle.
In a 45-minute hearing in a Washington federal court, Mr. Flynn admitted he misled Federal Bureau of Investigation agents about a series of calls he had last December with the ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, about sanctions imposed on Russia by the Obama Administration and about a United Nations resolution critical of Israel.
Mr. Flynn also acknowledged in court documents filed Friday that he had detailed conversations with Trump transition officials about the calls, and that a “very senior member” of the transition team had directed his contacts over the U.N. issue. A person familiar with the matter said that individual is Jared Kushner, a top White House adviser and the president’s son-in-law.
Abbe Lowell, a lawyer for Mr. Kushner, didn’t return requests for comment. Special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigators interviewed Mr. Kushner in recent weeks, focusing their questions exclusively on his interactions with Mr. Flynn, according to people familiar with the matter.
Prosecutors said Friday that Mr. Flynn consulted several times with top Trump transition officials on his contacts with Russia, suggesting Mr. Mueller is closely scrutinizing other prominent Trump associates. But his ultimate targets, and the exact nature of any potential wrongdoing, remain unclear.
Mr. Mueller is six months into a wide-ranging investigation into Russia’s efforts to meddle in the 2016 election and potential links between those efforts and the Trump campaign. In court documents, Mr. Mueller’s office said Mr. Flynn’s lies to the FBI impeded that investigation.
When asked by U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras how he pleads to the charge against him, Mr. Flynn, flanked by his two lawyers, said softly, “Guilty, your honor.”
Given his cooperation, Mr. Flynn is expected to face at most six months in prison, depending on his “substantial assistance in the investigation or prosecution of another person who has committed an offense,” according to his plea agreement.
Prosecutors didn’t elaborate Friday on who else they may be looking at. Mr. Flynn pleaded guilty only to one count of lying to the FBI, but a “statement of the offense” filed in connection with his plea detailed additional wrongdoing, including lying on a regulatory form about his private work directed by Turkish government officials.
Mr. Mueller’s decision not to file more serious charges against Mr. Flynn led many legal experts to infer that Mr. Flynn is providing significant information to the investigation.
“Mueller would not have accepted an agreement to plead to a single charge absent an arrangement of some sort, and presumably that is Flynn’s truthful testimony about other matters within Mueller’s jurisdiction,” said Paul Rosenzweig, a former federal prosecutor who was a deputy to special counsel Kenneth Starr during his investigation of President Bill Clinton.
In a statement Friday, Mr. Flynn said, “I recognize that the actions I acknowledged in court today were wrong, and, through my faith in God, I am working to set things right.”
He added: “My guilty plea and agreement to cooperate with the Special Counsel’s Office reflect a decision I made in the best interests of my family and of our country. I accept full responsibility for my actions.”
Mr. Flynn, who was a high-profile campaign surrogate for Mr. Trump but who lasted in his White House post for less than a month, becomes the most senior Trump associate to face criminal charges in the special counsel investigation. At the 2016 Republican National Convention, Mr. Flynn led the crowd in chanting “Lock her up!” in reference to Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton and her use of a private email server while she was secretary of state. On Friday, protesters outside the courthouse chanted as Mr. Flynn left: “Lock him up!”
Documents filed in federal court Friday detail Mr. Flynn’s misstatements to the FBI during an interview last January and depict a group of incoming Trump officials concerned about the Obama administration’s new sanctions on Russia and trying to figure out how to react to them.
Mr. Flynn “falsely stated” to the FBI that he hadn’t asked the Russian ambassador to refrain from escalating a response to the sanctions, a senior prosecutor in Mr. Mueller’s office, Brandon Van Grack, said in court. In fact, Mr. Flynn had called a senior official of the Trump transition team on Dec. 29—the day the sanctions were announced—to discuss “what, if anything, to communicate to the Russian ambassador,” according to a statement filed in connection with Mr. Flynn’s plea.
The unnamed senior official was with “other senior members” of the transition team at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s golf club in Florida, the document said. The official and Mr. Flynn discussed the fact that members of the transition team at Mar-a-Lago “did not want Russia to escalate the situation,” the document said.
Among the transition officials who met with Mr. Trump at Mar-a-Lago that day were Stephen Miller, K.T. McFarland, Kellyanne Conway, Steve Bannon and Reince Priebus, a Trump spokesman said at the time. Mr. Miller and Ms. Conway are now serving in the White House. Mr. Bannon and Mr. Priebus served as chief strategist and chief of staff, respectively, but were ousted over the summer. Ms. McFarland is Mr. Trump’s nominee for ambassador to Singapore.
“Immediately after his phone call,” Mr. Flynn called Mr. Kislyak and asked that Russia only respond “in a reciprocal manner,” the document said.
The next day, Dec. 30, Russian President Vladimir Putin released a statement that Russia wouldn’t take retaliatory measures, and Mr. Kislyak called Mr. Flynn on Dec. 31 to tell him Russia had “chosen not to retaliate in response to Flynn’s request.”
After his phone call, according to the document, Mr. Flynn spoke to “senior members” of the transition about his conversations with Mr. Kislyak and about Russia’s decision “not to escalate the situation.”
In addition to the sanctions issue, Mr. Flynn also lied about calls he made to “Russia and several other countries” about a U.N. resolution submitted by Egypt on Dec. 21, which criticized Israel’s construction of settlements in disputed territories.
Mr. Flynn “falsely stated” that he only asked on the calls about the countries’ position on the votes, the document said. In fact, “a very senior member of the Presidential Transition Team directed Flynn” to contact the officials to “influence those governments to delay the vote or defeat the resolution,” the document said.
The document also said Mr. Flynn made “materially false statements” in a regulatory filing about his separate work for Turkish interests, including stating that his company “did not know whether or the extent to which” the Turkish government was behind the project.
Mr. Flynn is the fourth—and most prominent—figure to be publicly charged in Mr. Mueller’s investigation to date. Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his longtime associate who also worked with the campaign, Richard Gates, were indicted in October for prior work they did in Ukraine, unrelated to the Trump campaign.
Another adviser, George Papadopoulos, has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russian go-betweens.
Former FBI Director James Comey, whom Mr. Trump fired in May, has testified that Mr. Trump asked him to back off his investigation of Mr. Flynn, which the president denies.
Prosecutors’ references Friday to Mr. Flynn’s conversations with other Trump transition officials suggest Mr. Mueller is scrutinizing the actions of other high-profile figures in Mr. Trump’s orbit. Mr. Kushner said in a statement to Congress in July that, at Mr. Trump’s request, he served as the main point of contact for foreign countries during the transition.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Friday’s plea shows that a Trump associate was “negotiating with the Russians against U.S. policy and interests before Donald Trump took office and after it was announced that Russia had interfered in our election.”
She added, “It’s critical that we determine whether Flynn spoke with the Russians on his own initiative and who knew and approved of his actions.”
A statement from White House lawyer Ty Cobb played down the guilty plea, noting that Mr. Flynn was in the job less than a month and had “entered a guilty plea to a single count.”
Mr. Flynn’s false statements, Mr. Cobb added, “mirror” similar ones he made to Vice President Mike Pence about his Russian contacts earlier this year, which the White House has said resulted in his resignation. “The conclusion of this phase of the special counsel’s work demonstrates again that the special counsel is moving with all deliberate speed and clears the way for a prompt and reasonable conclusion,” Mr. Cobb said.
U.S. investigators began scrutinizing Mr. Flynn’s contacts with the Russian ambassador after the two spoke in a series of phone calls during the presidential transition in December 2016, according to people familiar with the investigation.
During those calls, Mr. Flynn discussed the potential easing of U.S. sanctions imposed on Russia after the Trump administration came to power in January, current and former officials said at the time, citing transcripts of intercepted communications between Mr. Flynn and Mr. Kislyak.
America is in the midst of a reckoning about sexual misconduct, as a steady stream of men in the public eye have resigned or been fired from their jobs over sexual harassment and assault allegations.
Politicians have been no exception, with allegations coming against Republican Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore for allegedly harassing and assaulting teenagers — but also against Democratic members of Congress: Sen. Al Franken (Minn.) and Rep. John Conyers (Mich.).
As has become glaringly obvious, while the allegations against Moore are categorically worse than anything Franken or Conyers is accused of, harassment has no particular political affiliation.
Democrats need to find some honor and address their side of the sexual harassment problem, by forcing out Conyers and Franken. Not only do harassment victims deserve a measure of justice, Democrats' political reputation is on the line. These two — and I would guess probably a few others — need to go.
So far Democrats are only beginning to find their spines on this. When the first Franken allegations came out — from radio host Leeann Tweeden, that he had harassed, forcibly kissed, and then taken a shocking picture groping or nearly groping her while she was sleeping — Democratic Party hacks like Kate Harding wrote that he should not resignbecause Democrats are better on women's issues than Republicans. (Garrison Keillor said the idea of firing Franken was "absurd" before being firedover his own sexual harassment allegation.)
But as has also become very clear over the past few weeks, where there is one allegation, there are generally many. Some six different women in total have since come out with stories about Franken harassing, kissing, or groping them — most recently allegations of groping a veteran's breast in a photo-op, and a former elected official in New Hampshire who said he tried to give her an unwanted "wet, open-mouthed kiss."
When the allegations against Conyers came out (that he had exposed himself to his staff, as well as harassed, groped, and verbally abused them), House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi first hemmed and hawed, suggesting on Meet the Press that because he is an "icon," he would do the "right thing" — not saying what that would be. Later, she finally joined several of her colleagues in saying he should resign. This might be because Conyers is 88 years old, and was recently hospitalized reportedly due to stress over the story. It seems likely he'll be gone soon in any case — though his lawyer recently said that "Nancy Pelosi did not elect the congressman, and she sure as hell won't be the one that tells the congressman to leave."
But as yet, there has been no sustained pressure from the rest of the Democratic caucus to actually force him out, and almost no pressure of any kind for Franken to leave.
The first and most important reason for these two men to go is that sexually harassing and assaulting women is a grotesque crime and anyone who does it is unfit to hold high office (or any office). As Justin Charity argues, even a new partial standard that senators are not allowed to get away with it would be a large political victory in itself against sexism and harassment. Arguing that the occasional sexual assault is simply the price to pay to keep Democrats in power (so they can pass stuff like 12 weeks of unpaid maternity leave for some employees, I guess?) overlooks this enormous benefit.
Furthermore, axing these two would probably help Democrats politically, on net. They had the moral high ground against Roy Moore at first, but Franken and Conyers failing to resign make Democrats look like hypocrites, because they are. It muddles the case against Moore, and allows Republicans to excuse themselves for voting for him. Moore's Democratic opponent Doug Jones might well lose because of this cowardice.
Indeed, defending them is almost certainly not even the smart move in the narrowly cynical political sense. Minnesota has a Democratic governor, and so a replacement senator to serve out Franken's term would be of the same party. Conyers won his most recent election by over 60 points, so any replacement would certainly be a Democrat.
On the other hand, if these abusive men try to hang on to their seats, then they might well lose them in their upcoming elections. Conyers has so far promised not to run for re-election, but Hillary Clinton only won Minnesota by less than 2 points. Since the allegations, Franken's popularity has collapsed, falling from 53 percent to 36 percent. The opening for a Republican to win in 2020 would be a large one. The smartest move from a purely tactical standpoint would be for Franken to step aside and allow, say, Keith Ellison to step up. That way the incumbent can be a popular Democrat, and the party avoids a bitter primary battle.
One of the biggest problems with American politics is the distrust the population holds for elite politicians — perceiving them as a pack of amoral, dishonest, wagon-circling, featherbedding, logrolling, favor-trading, corrupt scumbags. This distrust is, to a great extent, deserved. One absolute necessity in rebuilding a measure of trust is for Democrats to behave honorably, and hold themselves to the standards they espouse. They can start by getting rid of the sexual predators in their midst.
Her defense of John Conyers as 'an icon' squandered the party's moral authority, Rep. Kathleen Rice says.
A Democratic congresswoman laced into Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday, suggesting the top House Democrat “set women back and — quite frankly, our party back — decades” by failing to more forcefully confront allegations of sexual harassment by veteran Democratic Rep. John Conyers.
Speaking to reporters at the Capitol, Rep. Kathleen Rice of New York said Pelosi’s appearance on “Meet the Press” on Sunday — when she raised questions about the accounts of Conyers’ accusers and described the Michigan Democrat as an “icon” — ceded the party’s moral high ground on sexual harassment issues, especially because one of Conyers’ accusers is bound by a nondisclosure agreement.
“I think that her comments on Sunday set women back and — quite frankly, our party back — decades,” said Rice, who is advocating for legislation that would expose a slew of hidden, taxpayer-funded settlements for sexual harassment by lawmakers and aides.
Rice said Pelosi’s comments were particularly egregious in light of President Donald Trump’s tacit embrace of Roy Moore, the Alabama GOP Senate candidate accused of molesting a minor.
“I think that we ceded the moral high ground on Sunday when our leader said on ‘Meet the Press’ that John Conyers was an icon and we don’t even know who these women are, when she was fully aware that the woman in question was bound by a nondisclosure agreement,” Rice said. “I think we had an opportunity to stake that moral high ground when you have a president who is supporting a man for Senate who — all credible allegations that have not been refuted — showed him to be a predator of teenage girls.”
A Pelosi spokesman said Rice’s comments were not an accurate portrayal of the minority leader’s sentiment.
“The leader was very clear on Sunday that no matter how great an individual’s legacy, it’s not a license for harassment,” said the spokesman, Drew Hammill.
Hammill also noted that Pelosi, in her “Meet the Press” interview, said she favored eliminating nondisclosure agreements that silenced victims from speaking out.
“[A]ll of these nondisclosure agreements have to go,” she told NBC’s Chuck Todd in the interview. Since that interview, Hammill added, Pelosi has said she believes Conyers’ accusers and subsequently spoke to one of them about her story. She also has signaled support for legislation from Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) that would reform the system of harassment reporting in Congress to protect victims.
Rice was among of a group of Democrats who vocally opposed Pelosi’s reelection as Democratic leader when the caucus voted after the November election to give Pelosi another term.
Rice’s comments escalate her already pointed criticism of Pelosi’s leadership — and of her Democratic colleagues, who she said earlier Wednesday were not confronting sexual harassment issues within their own ranks seriously enough. She’s one of three Democratic lawmakers, along with Reps. Pramila Jayapal of Washington and Earl Blumenauer of Oregon, who have called for Conyers to resign immediately.
Rice left early Wednesday from a closed-door Democratic Caucus meeting and told reporters she bailed because she didn't think her colleagues were approaching the harassment issue seriously. A Democratic aide said Rice exited after Pelosi spoke about the issue and also missed at least a portion of the comments from eight Democratic lawmakers who addressed harassment issues.
"There was a lengthy discussion of sexual harassment policies and reforms needed," the aide said.
AGE & RACE DOESN'T MATTER.......HOW EFFECTIVE ARE YOU IN THE 21st CENTURY??
POLITICIANS CAN'T LEAN ON THEIR PAST ACCOMPLISHMENTS FOREVER.
THAT'S WHY CONGRESS NEEDS TERM LIMITS.
Sources: NY Times, ABC News, CNN, Youtube
****** John Conyers Scandal Highlights Divisions, Generational and Gender
WASHINGTON — Representative John Conyers Jr., who took his Michigan seat in the House in 1965, has served in Congress longer than his fellow Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, has been alive.
So when Mr. Conyers, 88, stepped aside as the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee amid swirling allegations of sexual improprieties, it fell to Mr. Jeffries, 47, to hint that the accusations that cost Mr. Conyers his position may hasten broader changes to the Democratic Party that began with the election of President Trump.
“House Democrats have been in transition since the 2016 election with younger members being given the opportunity to be on the playing field in a meaningful way,” Mr. Jeffries said. “This moment that we are in, it may accelerate the elevation of younger voices.”
Sexual assault, harassment and other vulgarities have rocked Hollywood, scarred Silicon Valley and darkened media offices from New York to Washington. But the sexual harassment scandal surrounding Mr. Conyers, the longest serving member of the House, has highlighted schisms that are as much about generations as they are about gender.
Especially among Democrats, Mr. Conyers’s troubles have generated friction between the party’s aging leadership and rank-and-file, and underscored the difficulty that newer members of the House have in rising up in a system where leadership positions, including committee chairmanships, are determined almost solely by seniority.
The three top Democrats in the House — Representatives Nancy Pelosi of California, Steny Hoyer of Maryland and James E. Clyburn of South Carolina — are all in their late 70s. Mr. Conyers has been the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee — either as chairman or ranking member — for 10 years.
And for many of them, the response to the Conyers imbroglio has been telling. Mr. Conyers has denied all the charges, but under pressure, did relinquish his post. Mr. Clyburn suggested that for all he knew, “all of this could be made up.”
Ms. Pelosi, the minority leader, swiftly called for an ethics investigation last week after news broke that two aides had accused Mr. Conyers of sexual harassment, and that he had paid a settlement to one. By Tuesday afternoon, she was working quietly behind the scenes with Congressional Black Caucus members who were trying to persuade Mr. Conyers to resign, according to a senior Democratic aide. His lawyer said he had no immediate plans to do so.
But her path to that point has been meandering. Ms. Pelosi offered an awkward defense of Mr. Conyers on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, saying, “Just because someone is accused — and was it one accusation? Is it two? I think there has to be — John Conyers is an icon in our country.” That earned her scathing reviews.
Melanie Sloan, a respected ethics lawyer in Washington who worked for Mr. Conyers in the mid-1990s, was so incensed by the performance that she called Ms. Pelosi’s staff and reminded them that Mr. Conyers had verbally abused her and had once summoned her to his office while he was wearing his underwear. That prompted Ms. Pelosi to switch course again.
“I find the behavior Ms. Sloan described unacceptable and disappointing,” she said in a statement. “I believe what Ms. Sloan has told me.”
Another Conyers staff member, Deanna Maher, came forward Monday to tell The Detroit News that Mr. Conyers had made unwanted sexual advances toward her three times.
Younger Democrats have been far less equivocal than their leaders. Representatives Kathleen Rice of New York and Pramila Jayapal of Washington say Mr. Conyers should resign.
Mr. Jeffries, who said he supports Ms. Pelosi’s leadership, is among a number of House Democrats who lamented in interviews that the party must have a reckoning over the way it promotes younger, newer members.
Ms. Pelosi has been pushing in various ways to create opportunities for less senior members. As part of that effort, Mr. Jeffries, along with Representatives David Cicilline of Rhode Island and Cheri Bustos of Illinois, now lead the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee. The group is charged, in part, with revamping the messages Democrats use to appeal to voters.
Representative Beto O’Rourke, Democrat of Texas, said that even after three terms in Congress, he feels frustrated by a Democratic Party that seems wedded to older members and stale ideas. He said he has tried to make the best of his time by working on veterans and armed forces issues, but he will relinquish his seat next year for a long-shot run at Ted Cruz’s Senate seat.
In so doing, he is following the path of other rising Democratic stars, such as Rahm Emanuel and Chris Van Hollen, who left the House to pursue other political posts.
“There’s not really a path or the means to really reflect the diversity in ideas and geographical representation and tenure of service,” said Mr. O’Rourke, who was among 63 Democrats who did not support Ms. Pelosi’s bid to be re-elected as minority leader last year.
Mr. O’Rourke said Republicans do a better job of promoting younger members, in part because they limit, to six years, the length of time a member can be chairman or chairwoman of a committee. Democrats do not impose term limits on committee leaders or so-called ranking members, the top slot for lawmakers who are in the minority.
Representative Donald S. Beyer Jr., a former lieutenant governor of Virginia, added that if Democrats want to appeal to young people, young people need to be at the forefront of leadership.
“The best organizations are the ones that blend the éminence grise wisdom with the energy of young men and young women,” he said. “I’m not sure we do that very well.”
But Democrats must be careful if they decide to shake up the seniority system, said Representative Suzanne Bonamici, an Oregon Democrat who is in her third term on Capitol Hill.
Several members of the Congressional Black Caucus are concerned that their members might be pushed out of top positions on committees — including Homeland Security, Financial Services, and the Education and the Work Force committee — if Democrats change seniority rules.
“I want to make sure we continue the diversity we have in the Democratic Party,” said Representative Gregory Meeks, Democrat of New York and a member of the black caucus. “A way that African-Americans and Hispanics particularly have able to been make sure that they have been in committee leadership positions is that there has been a seniority system.”
The leadership has been making changes to the party structure since 2016, when Representative Tim Ryan of Ohio challenged Ms. Pelosi. His campaign pushed Ms. Pelosi to back a number of changes, including creating vice ranking member slots on each committee for younger members.
“It’s been no secret that I think we need new people stepping up across the board in the party providing leadership,” Mr. Ryan said.
As vice ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, Representative Jamie Raskin, a freshman Democrat from Maryland, has managed floor debate on nine bills, he said.
Mr. Jeffries worries that as lawmakers debate the direction of the party and the rules for its leadership, they will lose sight of their broader mission.
“The worst thing we could do right now is conduct ourselves in a circular firing squad based on a generational divide,” he said. “We should be united and disciplined in executing the mission of taking back the House, because nothing less than the future of the country is at stake. Period. Full stop.”
David Cameron has resigned as prime minister after Britain voted to leave the European Union.
The prime minister said Britain required "fresh leadership" to negotiate the country's exit from the EU.
"I do not think it would be right for me to be the captain that steers our country to its next destination," he said in a statement outside Downing Street.
He promised to "steady the ship" over the coming months before stepping down in October.
Mr Cameron said the result was the "will of the British people" which was an "instruction which must be delivered".
Mr Cameron was close to tears as he announced his decision.
The referendum, called by Mr Cameron, delivered a shock victory for the Leave campaign.
The Brexit vote immediately sent the pound tumbling and sparked calls for his resignation.
Boris Johnson is the favourite to replace Mr Cameron.
Embattled Hill staffer Elizabeth Lauten has resigned amid a backlash over critical remarks she posted on Facebook Friday about President Obama’s daughters.
Lauten, communications director for Rep. Stephen Lee Fincher (R-Tenn.), came under fire over the weekend after posting derogatory remarks about Sasha and Malia Obama regarding their appearance at the president’s annual Turkey pardoning.
“Dear Sasha and Malia, I get you’re both in those awful teen years, but you’re a part of the First Family, try showing a little class,” Lauten wrote. “Rise to the occasion. Act like being in the White House matters to you. Dress like you deserve respect, not a spot at a bar.”
Lauten confirmed her resignation to The Washington Post on Monday morning.
Several media outlets pointed out that the two girls, ages 16 and 13, appeared bored while their father spoke during Wednesday’s event. The exasperated looks on the pair’s faces were used to gently mock the annual turkey pardon on social media Wednesday and Thursday and drew wry headlines from publications such as USA Today and Gawker.
But Lauten’s comments struck a nerve among critics who accused her of going too far and turning the two girls into political targets. Her original post quickly went viral, inspiring blog posts and tweets condemning her choice of words. She issued an apology on Facebook hours after her initial post.
"When I first posted on Facebook I reacted to an article and I quickly judged the two young ladies in a way that I would never have wanted to be judged myself as a teenager," Lauten wrote Friday. "After many hours of prayer, talking to my parents, and re-reading my words online I can see more clearly just how hurtful my words were."
The president and first lady Michelle Obama have aggressively tried to shield the first daughters from the media spotlight during the family’s six years in the White House. The episode has sparked fresh conversation about the sensitive position the two girls are in as teenagers living in the White House.
While the tenor of Lauten’s comments have been widely condemned, top Republican operatives have also criticized the media’s response, suggesting the coverage has been motivated by political bias.
“Children, especially the first daughters, are off limits. While the comments were inappropriate and insensitive, the mainstream media's coverage of this story is appalling,” said Republican National Committee communications director Sean Spicer in a series of tweets Monday. “In over 20 years in politics I have never seen 1 of the countless inappropriate comments by Democrats ever covered to a faction [sic] of this.”
Article Sources: CBS News; Washington Post; Youtube
Washington (AFP) - The Missouri police officer who killed an unarmed black teen sparking months of protests in the city of Ferguson will never return to policing, his lawyer said.
Darren Wilson is currently in discussions with the Ferguson, Missouri police department on the terms and conditions of his departure, attorney Neil Bruntrager said this week.
"There's no way in the world he can go back to being a police officer," the lawyer said.
"It's not a question of if, it's a question of when," Bruntrager said of Wilson's departure.
Wilson shot and killed 18-year-old Michael Brown in August claiming he acted in self-defense.
The shooting set off days of racially-charged protests that erupted again this week after a grand jury on Monday announced that Wilson would not be charged over the fatal shooting.
Bruntrager told CNN that Wilson, who has said his conscience is clear, could simply not go back to work given the outrage over the case.
"The first day he would be back on the street something terrible would happen to him or to someone that would be working with him," he told CNN.
"The last thing he wants is to put other police officers at risk," the attorney added.
FAMU President James Ammons is in the Hot Seat! After a "No Confidence" Vote by School Trustees, Ammons' job is on the line. Ammons was criticized for his mishandling of Bandmember Robert Champion's Hazing Death Investigation. It appears Mr. Ammons has long cultivated an environment ripe for Hazing. If this is true than Yes it is most certainly time for FAMU to seek New Leadership.
The president of Florida A&M University received a no-confidence vote Thursday from school trustees for his handling of the hazing death of a drum major in its famed Marching 100 band, but he said afterward that he won't resign.
The board voted 8 to 4 to approve the no-confidence measure against university president James Ammons.
Ammons signed a five-year contract extension last year. He said he plans to remain in his post and help the university stamp out what many call a culture of hazing surrounding the university and its nationally recognized band, which has played at Super Bowls and inaugurations.
"This is very serious for the future of this university," Ammons said after Thursday's vote. "You have my commitment to fix them and get this job done."
The school has been reeling since the November death of drum major Robert Champion. Eleven members of the band have been charged with felony hazing for allegedly beating him to death. The death exposed a wide culture of hazing at the school. Critics say Ammons and other administrators ignored it.
Champion died after being beaten in a band bus outside an Orlando hotel after a football game. Ammons suspended The Marching 100 soon afterward and last month announced he was continuing the suspension for the coming year.
Ammons became president in 2007 following a budget scandal that threatened the school's accreditation. He said recently that the current crisis triggered by Champion's death marks the biggest challenge of his career.
Trustees who voted against Ammons not only cited problems with hazing and The Marching 100, but also the fact that a top auditor at the university resigned after it was revealed that false audit summaries were presented to the board of trustees. The university is also struggling with financial woes because of state budget cuts and a likely decline in enrollment this fall.
The school, meanwhile, wants to launch a major fundraising campaign in the coming year but its athletic program, now grappling with a deficit, must figure out how to fill football stands this fall even though the band has been suspended for the coming year.
"I do not have confidence in Dr. Ammons to lead us out of this crisis," trustee Bill Jennings said.
Narayan Persaud, the faculty member on the board, said he had concluded that the university was "caught in a wilderness of errors."
"How can we reclaim control of the dignity of this once prestigious university has been pulled backwards and backwards?" Persaud said.
Last month, university officials acknowledged 101 members on the 457-member marching band roster were not FAMU students. Earlier this week, Ammons proposed limiting the band to only full-time FAMU students and stiffening requirements for membership.
The Florida A&M Board of Trustees issued a vote of no confidence against the university's president Thursday in the wake of last year's hazing death of a school band member.
President James Ammons acknowledged the board's feelings after the 8-4 vote.
"I hear you loudly and clearly," Ammons said. "I understand there are measures I have to take, as president of the university, to fix things. And I will fix them."
The vote followed a series of investigations into the university amid concerns over the November death of drum major Robert Champion. The vote was also related to financial audits that resulted from the investigation.
Champion's family said they agreed with the vote.
"They have no confidence in Dr. Ammons' ability to effectively manage this hazing crisis," the family said in a statement released by their spokesman, Ryan Julison.
Champion, 26, died after the initiation ritual aboard a bus, of what the Orange County medical examiner said was "hemorrhagic shock due to soft tissue hemorrhage, due to blunt force trauma."
The medical examiner ruled the death a homicide, prompting a police investigation and renewed public scrutiny of hazing in the university's famed Marching 100 marching band, which got its name in 1950 and actually has about 400 members.
Four students were expelled from the school and another 30 were dismissed from the band soon after Champion's death.
The police investigation resulted in charges against 14 people. Eleven face one count of third-degree felony hazing resulting in death. Each also is accused of two counts of first-degree misdemeanor hazing.
State law provides a prison term of up to six years for those facing the more serious charges.
Three people each face a single count of misdemeanor first-degree hazing. Sentences in such cases typically call for up to a year in jail.
FAMU said it took steps to eradicate the problem of hazing after Champion's death, and the the board of trustees approved an anti-hazing plan that includes an independent panel of experts to investigate hazing allegations.
The band has been suspended since Champion's death and Ammons said last month it will stay inactive through the upcoming school year. The band's long-time director, Julian White, retired earlier this month.
There are more than 2,000 pages of police interviews with witnesses and defendants who were aboard the bus on the day of Champion's death.
Multiple witnesses say Champion was forced to walk, shirtless, from the front of the darkened bus to the back while being beaten with drumsticks, bass drum mallets, punches and kicks.
"You get beaten until you get to the back," one band member said on the condition of anonymity.
Drum major Keon Hollis told investigators he went through the same ritual just ahead of Champion and that they did it to gain respect.
Hollis said they had to fight their way through a fury of punches and slaps, while other band members swung with sticks and straps.
"(Robert) really didn't want to do it, but he was kind of like, 'I'm just going to do it,' " Hollis said. "You know, I told him, I said, 'if you don't want to do it, don't do it.' "
Champion's parents say their son was against hazing and would not have participated willingly.
The Marching 100 is one of the top university marching bands in the United States, famed for its elaborate dance formations and innovative style incorporating popular music.
Sanford city commissioners have voted "no confidence" in police Chief Bill Lee Jr., who has been publicly lambasted for his department's handling of the fatal shooting of Miami teenager Trayvon Martin.
Commissioner Mark McCarty made the motion that could lead to the ouster of the chief, who has been on the job just 10 months. Mayor Jeff Triplett and Commissioner Velma Williams voted with the majority.
"I take no pleasure in a public flogging of our police chief," McCarty said before a packed council chambers. "But he really should turn in his resignation."
The vote was 3-2, with Commissioners Randy Jones and Patty Mahany voting against.
"A rush to judgment is wrong," said Mahany, who called the vote a "knee-jerk reaction."
Lee, 52, was hired as chief in May in the wake of criticism surrounding the beating of a homeless black man by the son of a Sanford lieutenant. Lee was not at tonight's meeting.
Commissioners can't fire Lee, a Sanford native, because he reports to City Manager Norton Bonaparte Jr. However, their vote sends a strong signal.
"I'll take it under advisement," Bonaparte said.
Bonaparte, who became city manager in September, called the vote "a strong statement" but said he wants to wait for investigations by the U.S. Department of Justice and the Brevard-Seminole State Attorney's Office to be completed before he acts.
Trayvon's killing on Feb. 26 has prompted national outrage. Today, Trayvon's parents, Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin, attended a "Million Hoodie March" in New York City.
"I'm embarrassed by this national shame," Williams said at the meeting.
Trayvon, who was wearing a hoodie at the time, was shot by crime-watch volunteer George Zimmerman, 28, at Retreat at Twin Lakes, a gated town-house community in Sanford. Moments before, Zimmerman called police and reported Trayvon as a suspicious person as the 17-year-old walked to his father's fiancee's home after a candy run to 7-Eleven.
Zimmerman has claimed self-defense under Florida's 2005 "Stand Your Ground" law, prompting outrage, meetings, marches and calls for Zimmerman's arrest. The law allows people to shoot to kill if they think they are being threatened with serious violence or death.
Earlier this evening, commissioners decided to move Monday's City Commission meeting to the Sanford Civic Center to accommodate the hundreds of people expected to attend.
case.
The civic center, 401 E. Seminole Blvd., holds about 600 people, and the staff plans to put speakers in an adjacent park for overflow crowds. The entire meeting will be devoted to the shooting case in a "town hall" style.
Members of Trayvon's family are expected to speak during the 5 p.m. forum.
Welcome to the BLACK POLITICAL BUZZ Blog. (Established 2008)
My name is Laurel. (Author & Publisher)
I Blog with a focus on POLITICS, Business, and occasionally Entertainment.
FACTS ABOUT LAUREL:
Wife,
Mother of a U.S. Soldier,
Sister,
Woman of GOD,
Loyal Friend,
Creative,
Blood-related to a nationally known Charlotte Politician.
Black Female, Intelligent,
Married,
Love to Travel,
Credentialed by the RNC and DNC.
Political Blogger/ Commentator
Grassroots Activist,
PROFESSIONAL STATUS:
Credential Political Blogger/ Commentator,
Registered Independent Voter
Original Native of BROOKLYN, NY
Currently reside in CHARLOTTE, NC
I’m Nice but don’t get it twisted because my Mind is Sharp!
Since You’ve Chosen to Visit and Read the Contents of this Blog by Personal Choice, and of Your Own Free Will,
Please don’t ask me to Compensate you for Expressing individual commentary/ Posted Articles, which are protected by the First Amendment, citing Freedom of Speech & Freedom of Expression.
No Intentionally Malicious Slander, Libel or Defamation of Character content will be published and I will always Credit all Sources.
NOTE TO ALL ELECTED OFFICIALS, APPOINTED OFFICIALS & PUBLIC FIGURES:
Per the Landmark U.S. Supreme Court Case: 1964 case of New York Times v. Sullivan………
The Public has a Right to Criticize the People who Govern them, so the least Protection from Defamation is given to Public Officials. When officials are accused of something that involves their behavior in office, they have to prove all of the above elements of defamation and they must also prove that the defendant acted with “actual malice.” (For a definition of actual malice, see the “History of Defamation and the First Amendment, below.”)
People who aren’t Elected but who are Still Public Figures because they are influential or famous — like Actors, Actresses, Movie Stars, Singers & Entertainers, Journalists, TV Hosts, Bloggers, etc., — also have to Prove that Defamatory statements were made with Actual Malice, in most cases.
To the Associated Press and other Media Organizations:
When I use your Content Links., I’m also citing the Fair Use Doctrine (Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107) for further Copyright permission.
Posts and Links published on Black Political Buzz are not endorsed by Black Political Buzz Blog Author Laurel’s Employer, nor the Employers of other Black Political Buzz employees.
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Comments, Links and Opinions of site visitors are Independently-Owned and not endorsed by Black Political Buzz employees, Blog Author Laurel or Laurel’s Employer.)
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I will also Only Endorse Requests for Donations on behalf of Legitimate Politicians and Legitimate Political Candidates. PERIOD!!
If anyone else or another Organization wishes to post a link to Request Donations, I am NOT endorsing ANY of those Requests!
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For Story Tips….Corrections…….. or Requests for Endorsements:
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Thanks for stopping by
God Bless
Laurel @BLACK POLITICAL BUZZ
LINKS: POLITICAL PERSPECTIVE & INFORMATIONAL SITES
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