We appeciate the prompt federal investigation of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie's staff closing Ft. Lee approaches to the George Washington Bridge -- political retaliation.
Closer to home, Attorney General Eric Holder and the Justice Department must investigate St. Johns County Sheriff DAVID SHOAR's evident misfeasance, malfeasance and nonfeasance, as documented by the New York Times ("Two Shots on a Summer Evening") and PBS Frontline ("A Death in St. Augustine.")
A St. Johns County Sheriff's Deputy's handgun was used to shoot his girlfriend, and Sheriff DAVID SHOAR refused to recuse himself from a putative "investigation," while misusing government funds to hire hack outside counsel and putative "experts" to nitpick FDLE investigator Rusty Rogers' investigation of the shooting, mailing a misbegotten report to the Justice Department Civil Rights Division in attempt to stir up an investigation of Rogers and FDLE.
Sounds like possible obstruction of justice, mail fraud, wire fraud, and civil rights violations.
SHERIFF DAVID SHOAR refused to go on-camera or on-the-record to answer questions from three-time Pulitzer Prize winner Walt Bogdanich.
In the words of William F. Buckley, Jr., "why does baloney reject the grinder?"
Attorney General Holder: please subpoena SHERIFF DAVID B. SHOAR and his henchmen before a federal grand jury pursuant to Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 6. Let's see if they invoke their Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination, tell the truth, or commit perjury.
Justice for Michelle O'Connell in 2014.
Sunday, January 19, 2014
WAR DEAD MEMORIAL: The Late St. Augustine Mayor Shelley's Son Writes the St. Augustine Record
Writing from North Georgia, the son of the late reactionary St. Augustine Mayor Joseph Shelley has a column in today's St. Augustine Record, the day before the opening of the City of St. Augustine's "Journey" exhibit on 450 years of African-American history.
I won't leave you in suspense.
No, Mayor Joseph Shelley's son did not apologize for his father's rebarbative racism, which he brandished here during 1963-64.
Southern segregationist "Jim Crow Law" reached its nadir under Mayor Shelley and St. Augustine, Florida oligarchs, who chilled, coerced and restrained protected activity under the First Amendment -- with a local judge even sending four school children (the "St. Augustine Four") to juvenile prisons as punishment for protesting segregation at Woolworth's lunch counter.
Mayor Joseph Shelley was a card-carrying member of the right-wing John Birch Society (whose founder, Robert Welch, and delusional beliefs were called crazy by conservative National Review founder William F. Buckley, Jr.).
Mayor Joseph Shelley was guilty of the worst sort of governmental arrogance. American Apartheid here made African-Americans' lives a living hell. Yet Mayor Shelley ranted against equality, habitually violating the Fouteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.
Racist Mayor Joseph Shelley and his fellow St. Augustine City Commissioners and the City Manager were guilty of refusing to meet with African-Americans. They placed a tape recorder in an empty room when they were promised a meeting after Vice President Lyndon Johnson's visit here -- blacks were supposed to tape-record their grievances for the racist all-white city government.
Our city's patron, Saint Augustine, himself wrote some 1600 years ago, "An unjust law is no law at all."
Mayor Joseph Shelley, Florida's U.S. Senator George Smathers and other racists empowered the Ku Klux Klan.
Segregationist U.S. Senator George Smathers, a putative Democrat and JFK friend, actually signed the Southern Manifesto (which LBJ refused to sign, along with both Tennessee Senators Albert Gore, Sr. and Estes Kefauver).
In 1964, Senator Smathers offered to pay Dr. King's bail money if King agreed to leave the State of Florida and never return.
In St. Augustine, the White Establsment, Mayor Shelley and U.S. Senator Smathers and the St. Augustine Record effectively egged on bomb-throwing white racists. Undeterred, courageous civil rights protesters were beaten, jailed, nearly burned to death, shot at, cattle-prodded, fired from their jobs, blacklisted and run out of town. The St. Augustine Record's then-owner printed propaganda, including advances for KKK ralles, printed directions to the beach house where Dr. King was staying (resulting in arson and gun-shooting) and, further invading privacy and risking lives, actually printing the names and addresses of black children desegregating local schools, resulting in firebombings (and firings and blacklisting of their parents). Florida Memorial University was run out of town for supporting non-violent protests.
The KKK, John Birch Society, racist lawyer-bomber J.B. Stoner, the local Rod and Gun Clubs, and Hoss Manucy's Raider's ran St. Augustine, rioting against civil rights marchers. They worked hand-in-glove with racist Police Chief Virgil Stuart (for whom they named our Police Headquarters) and then-Sheriff Lawrence O. Davis. (St. Johns County Sheriff Lawrence O. Davis was in 1970 removed from office by the Florida Governor Claude Kirk and Florida's State Senate by vote of 44-2, despite lying denials (claiming Davis was "exonerated" by the State Senate and that Davis "held the town together" during 1964), appearng for years on the website of controversal St. Johns County Sheriff DAVID B. SHOAR (an habitual prevaricator serial tortfeasor whose misfeasance, malfeasance and nonfeasance was the subject of a New York Times-PBS Frontline investigation on his refusal to reecuse himself from handling the shooting of a deputy's girlfriend).
In 1964, after the arrest here of the mother of Massachusetts' Governor, Mrs. Mary Peabody, St. Augustine Mayor Joseph Shelley actually travelled to New York and told NBC News on the Today Show that there were "no racial problems" in St. Augustine!
Segregationist St. Augustine Mayor Joseph Shelley issued a May 28, 1964 ukase ("Mayor Issues Statement on Seriousness of Taking Part in Demonstrations," St. Augustine Record), threatening jail, criminal convictions and lifetime blacklisting for young people demonstrating, falsely claiming African-American young pople "are coerced, induced or otherwise appealed to by violent (sic) radical civil rights leaders to go out and deliberately break" segregation laws and claiming police reports proved they all became violent criminals. Mayor Shelley's hysterical racist rant, printed in the Record, demanding that African-American parents not let their children be involved in "so-called peaceful demonstrations whcih may later evolve into violation of state laws," saying otherwise they are "involved in crimes against both God (sic) and man (sic)."
"Against both God and man?"
So much for blasphemy by bigots and segregationists (in South Africa, Apartheid rulers even censored the Bible, changing one line to read "I am suntanned, but I am comely!")
What a liar.
What a racist reprobate.
What a self-aggrandizing narcissistic self-promoter.
So what did Mayor Joseph Shelley's son write about to the Record this morning?
Healing?
Forgiveness?
Fairness?
Equality?
Honesty?
Justice?
African-American history in St. Augustine?
"Nope" times seven.
The son of Shelley wrote to support appropriating city money on moving the war memorial in the Plaza de la Constitucion, adjacent to the Old Slave Market.
That was it.
"How trite," as my mother would say.
The St. Augustine's war memorial is a small coquina reproduction of one of the city gates. It has been in that spot, at the corner of Cathedral Place and Charlotte Street, for some 75 years.
In connection with the restored Bridge of Lions, FPL and DOT installed electrical boxes nearby some eight (8) years ago.
No one noticed.
No one cared.
No one complained.
But recently, some local veterans have belatedly complained.
Thank you for speaking out.
Yes, the electrical boxes are ugly.
Yes, the electrical boxes should be boxed or covered and screened. How about a sculpture on top to go with the war dead memorial, perhaps with a flag-draped coffin to remind us of the real human cost of our Nation's wars?
But without asking the City administration, two veterans pressure-washed the monument, which Vice Mayor Nancy Sikes-Kline pointed out could easily have damaged the coquina.
How sad that veterans have nothing else to contribute to our civic life.
Where were local veterans' organizations when the City was violating civil rights?
Where were they when a prior City Manager, WILLIAM B. HARISS, ran St. Augustine as a dictatorship?
Where were they when WILLIAM HARRISS (now one of SHOAR's henchmen) was violating the First Amendment and arresting artists and entertainers on St. George Street?
Where were they when WILLIAM B. HARRISS was dumping 40,000 cubic yards of solid waste in our Old City Reservoir, while intimidating local activists speaking at City Commission meetings?
AWOL. (Absent without leave).
My father, for whom the South Jersey Chapter of the 82nd Airborne Divn. Assn. is named, taught me to stand up to bullies, and not to cower to power. Local veterans groups here never spoke out against oppression in St. Augustine. In fact, during 1964, the American Legion post here was part of it. Drunken violent KKK members satisfied their need for cheap beer at the American Legion, conveniently located near the Slave Market Square.
You have the right to remain silent, but we wish you wouldn't.
How nice that Mayor Joseph Shelley's son, writing from North Georgia, says he still loves St. Augustine.
How sad that Mayor Shelley's son blew the opportunity to say one (1) word to promote healing here in our Nation's Oldest City.
Monson Motel owner and Florida Attractions Association Jimmy Brock's offspring apologized (in Jeremy Dean's film, "Dare Not Walk Alone") for him pouring muriatic acid into the Monson Hotel swimming pool (June 18, 1964), amid civil rights demonstrators who waded in (the same day as the largest mass arrest of rabbis in American history).
That lady's gracious apology promoted healing. So did Andrew Young's apology in his documentary, "Crossing in St. Augustine," for focusing so much worldwide attention on the unfortunate Mr. Brock, who personally said that he wanted to integrate but was threatened by the KKK and corrupt local law enforcement.
Dr. King said that St. Augustine was "the most lawless" city in America.
Bad leadership by Mayor Joseph Shelley made it worse. This bigoted obstetrician gave St. Augustine a well-deserved bad reputation.
Obviously his son is in deep denial.
Not a peep from him about environmental and environmental racism problems we've been working on solving in St. Augustine.
Just a tedious tendentious barb about moving a war memorial, a subject that sent one of our veterans into a frenzy of emitting overstated pejoratives against city officials.
Why move the veterans memorial? Screening the electrical boxes is the simple engineering solution.
Moving a 75-year old coquina monument is fraught with the risk that the coquina shell walls will crumble.
Noving the St. Augustine War Memorial makes it looks like our veterans are racist, and not comfortable with having "their" memorial located just the other side of the Slave Market from the Civil Rights Foot Soldiers Monument.
Hence, if the City moved the St. Augustine War Memorial based on such specious grounds, it would make it look like the City was knuckling under to racists, of the ilk of the late Mayor Joseph A. Shelley, and the KKK members who got drunk at the American Legion before throwing bricks and punches at civil rights workers in 1964.
This could mean a civil rights lawsuit under the Fourteenth Amendment.
Leave the St. Augustine War Memorial where it is: the case has not been made from moving the monument. This is not even a tempest in a teapot -- it is a snare and a delusion.
Screen the electrical boxes and then we're done.
Put a scultpure on top and we've got a revivifed monument to St. Augustine's War Dead.
So the Record ran this superficial Sunday column from the son of St. Augustine's racist former Mayor Joseph Shelley on: (a) the day before the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday and (b) the day before the opening of the "Journey" exhibit on 450 years of African-American history here.
Why?
Nothing else available?
This is, at best, execrably bad timing and bad sociology. By printing the column from Mayor Shelley's son, the Record at best unwittingly and de facto gives aid and comfort to racists here, as evidenced by Shelley's line about the "real locals" here.
What did he mean by that fatuous statement, in his column ("Names on the monument deserve our respect")?
Here it is, in context: "My family roots run deep in the St. Augustine soil and you 'real locals' know what I am talking about if you remember reading any of my father's (the late Dr. Joseph A. Shelley) letters to The Record. It is in his spirit and his rich years of having been a community leader, local doctor and active politician that I write ths letter."
Are progressive, younger, newer, hipper or darker-pigmented St. Augustinians not "real locals" in the eyes of David P. Shelley?
How ethnocentric.
How insulting.
How deeply offensive and divisive.
It's like ultra-rightists who insist on dividing, calling themselves "real Americans," as opposed to all of the other Americans.
The direct reference to Mayor Shelley's letters to the newspaper assumedly embraces his threatening criminal arrests and lifetime blacklisting of demonstrators in his May 28, 1964 letter, quoted above ("Mayor Issues Statement on Seriousness of Taking Part in Demonstrations," St. Augustine Record),
The David P. Shelley column today is not so subtle after all -- this "dog whistle" to ex-Mayor Joseph Shelley's few remaining local supporters suggests that perhaps a few ultra-rightist plug uglies would like to manufacture political capital out of a few electrical boxes located near the war veterans' monument.
The KKK will never elect a Mayor or Commissioner again -- the chances are de micromis.
As former City Manager William Pomar once said, "The Bohemians have won."
Was this dull column really "fit to print?"
As LBJ said after Selma, "We SHALL overcome."
Today St. Augustine has two monuments to civil rights heroes and sheroes in our Slave Market Square, where the KKK once ran rampant, supported by Mayor Joseph Shelley.
Mayor Shelley is now but a bad memory, which was briefly revived by a frivolous, irrelevant editorial page column in today's newspaper.
What do you reckon?
You tell me.
Ed Slavin
www.cleanupcityofstaugustine.blogspot.com
Box 3084
St. Augustine, Florida 32085-3084
904-377-4998
POSTSCRIPT: Commissionrs Monday night approved moving the memorial 75 feet to the northwest along King street, directly opposite our Civil Rights Foot Soldiers Monument. Commissioners do not have jurisdiction over the park west of Government House. Putting the War Memorial there would have intefered with public access to the fountain, recenty rehabilitated with a donation from John Valdes, the visionary builder and PZB member who is running for City Commission. I pointed out that the literature indicates people don't like cutting off access to water features like fountains.
I won't leave you in suspense.
No, Mayor Joseph Shelley's son did not apologize for his father's rebarbative racism, which he brandished here during 1963-64.
Southern segregationist "Jim Crow Law" reached its nadir under Mayor Shelley and St. Augustine, Florida oligarchs, who chilled, coerced and restrained protected activity under the First Amendment -- with a local judge even sending four school children (the "St. Augustine Four") to juvenile prisons as punishment for protesting segregation at Woolworth's lunch counter.
Mayor Joseph Shelley was a card-carrying member of the right-wing John Birch Society (whose founder, Robert Welch, and delusional beliefs were called crazy by conservative National Review founder William F. Buckley, Jr.).
Mayor Joseph Shelley was guilty of the worst sort of governmental arrogance. American Apartheid here made African-Americans' lives a living hell. Yet Mayor Shelley ranted against equality, habitually violating the Fouteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.
Racist Mayor Joseph Shelley and his fellow St. Augustine City Commissioners and the City Manager were guilty of refusing to meet with African-Americans. They placed a tape recorder in an empty room when they were promised a meeting after Vice President Lyndon Johnson's visit here -- blacks were supposed to tape-record their grievances for the racist all-white city government.
Our city's patron, Saint Augustine, himself wrote some 1600 years ago, "An unjust law is no law at all."
Mayor Joseph Shelley, Florida's U.S. Senator George Smathers and other racists empowered the Ku Klux Klan.
Segregationist U.S. Senator George Smathers, a putative Democrat and JFK friend, actually signed the Southern Manifesto (which LBJ refused to sign, along with both Tennessee Senators Albert Gore, Sr. and Estes Kefauver).
In 1964, Senator Smathers offered to pay Dr. King's bail money if King agreed to leave the State of Florida and never return.
In St. Augustine, the White Establsment, Mayor Shelley and U.S. Senator Smathers and the St. Augustine Record effectively egged on bomb-throwing white racists. Undeterred, courageous civil rights protesters were beaten, jailed, nearly burned to death, shot at, cattle-prodded, fired from their jobs, blacklisted and run out of town. The St. Augustine Record's then-owner printed propaganda, including advances for KKK ralles, printed directions to the beach house where Dr. King was staying (resulting in arson and gun-shooting) and, further invading privacy and risking lives, actually printing the names and addresses of black children desegregating local schools, resulting in firebombings (and firings and blacklisting of their parents). Florida Memorial University was run out of town for supporting non-violent protests.
The KKK, John Birch Society, racist lawyer-bomber J.B. Stoner, the local Rod and Gun Clubs, and Hoss Manucy's Raider's ran St. Augustine, rioting against civil rights marchers. They worked hand-in-glove with racist Police Chief Virgil Stuart (for whom they named our Police Headquarters) and then-Sheriff Lawrence O. Davis. (St. Johns County Sheriff Lawrence O. Davis was in 1970 removed from office by the Florida Governor Claude Kirk and Florida's State Senate by vote of 44-2, despite lying denials (claiming Davis was "exonerated" by the State Senate and that Davis "held the town together" during 1964), appearng for years on the website of controversal St. Johns County Sheriff DAVID B. SHOAR (an habitual prevaricator serial tortfeasor whose misfeasance, malfeasance and nonfeasance was the subject of a New York Times-PBS Frontline investigation on his refusal to reecuse himself from handling the shooting of a deputy's girlfriend).
In 1964, after the arrest here of the mother of Massachusetts' Governor, Mrs. Mary Peabody, St. Augustine Mayor Joseph Shelley actually travelled to New York and told NBC News on the Today Show that there were "no racial problems" in St. Augustine!
Segregationist St. Augustine Mayor Joseph Shelley issued a May 28, 1964 ukase ("Mayor Issues Statement on Seriousness of Taking Part in Demonstrations," St. Augustine Record), threatening jail, criminal convictions and lifetime blacklisting for young people demonstrating, falsely claiming African-American young pople "are coerced, induced or otherwise appealed to by violent (sic) radical civil rights leaders to go out and deliberately break" segregation laws and claiming police reports proved they all became violent criminals. Mayor Shelley's hysterical racist rant, printed in the Record, demanding that African-American parents not let their children be involved in "so-called peaceful demonstrations whcih may later evolve into violation of state laws," saying otherwise they are "involved in crimes against both God (sic) and man (sic)."
"Against both God and man?"
So much for blasphemy by bigots and segregationists (in South Africa, Apartheid rulers even censored the Bible, changing one line to read "I am suntanned, but I am comely!")
What a liar.
What a racist reprobate.
What a self-aggrandizing narcissistic self-promoter.
So what did Mayor Joseph Shelley's son write about to the Record this morning?
Healing?
Forgiveness?
Fairness?
Equality?
Honesty?
Justice?
African-American history in St. Augustine?
"Nope" times seven.
The son of Shelley wrote to support appropriating city money on moving the war memorial in the Plaza de la Constitucion, adjacent to the Old Slave Market.
That was it.
"How trite," as my mother would say.
The St. Augustine's war memorial is a small coquina reproduction of one of the city gates. It has been in that spot, at the corner of Cathedral Place and Charlotte Street, for some 75 years.
In connection with the restored Bridge of Lions, FPL and DOT installed electrical boxes nearby some eight (8) years ago.
No one noticed.
No one cared.
No one complained.
But recently, some local veterans have belatedly complained.
Thank you for speaking out.
Yes, the electrical boxes are ugly.
Yes, the electrical boxes should be boxed or covered and screened. How about a sculpture on top to go with the war dead memorial, perhaps with a flag-draped coffin to remind us of the real human cost of our Nation's wars?
But without asking the City administration, two veterans pressure-washed the monument, which Vice Mayor Nancy Sikes-Kline pointed out could easily have damaged the coquina.
How sad that veterans have nothing else to contribute to our civic life.
Where were local veterans' organizations when the City was violating civil rights?
Where were they when a prior City Manager, WILLIAM B. HARISS, ran St. Augustine as a dictatorship?
Where were they when WILLIAM HARRISS (now one of SHOAR's henchmen) was violating the First Amendment and arresting artists and entertainers on St. George Street?
Where were they when WILLIAM B. HARRISS was dumping 40,000 cubic yards of solid waste in our Old City Reservoir, while intimidating local activists speaking at City Commission meetings?
AWOL. (Absent without leave).
My father, for whom the South Jersey Chapter of the 82nd Airborne Divn. Assn. is named, taught me to stand up to bullies, and not to cower to power. Local veterans groups here never spoke out against oppression in St. Augustine. In fact, during 1964, the American Legion post here was part of it. Drunken violent KKK members satisfied their need for cheap beer at the American Legion, conveniently located near the Slave Market Square.
You have the right to remain silent, but we wish you wouldn't.
How nice that Mayor Joseph Shelley's son, writing from North Georgia, says he still loves St. Augustine.
How sad that Mayor Shelley's son blew the opportunity to say one (1) word to promote healing here in our Nation's Oldest City.
Monson Motel owner and Florida Attractions Association Jimmy Brock's offspring apologized (in Jeremy Dean's film, "Dare Not Walk Alone") for him pouring muriatic acid into the Monson Hotel swimming pool (June 18, 1964), amid civil rights demonstrators who waded in (the same day as the largest mass arrest of rabbis in American history).
That lady's gracious apology promoted healing. So did Andrew Young's apology in his documentary, "Crossing in St. Augustine," for focusing so much worldwide attention on the unfortunate Mr. Brock, who personally said that he wanted to integrate but was threatened by the KKK and corrupt local law enforcement.
Dr. King said that St. Augustine was "the most lawless" city in America.
Bad leadership by Mayor Joseph Shelley made it worse. This bigoted obstetrician gave St. Augustine a well-deserved bad reputation.
Obviously his son is in deep denial.
Not a peep from him about environmental and environmental racism problems we've been working on solving in St. Augustine.
Just a tedious tendentious barb about moving a war memorial, a subject that sent one of our veterans into a frenzy of emitting overstated pejoratives against city officials.
Why move the veterans memorial? Screening the electrical boxes is the simple engineering solution.
Moving a 75-year old coquina monument is fraught with the risk that the coquina shell walls will crumble.
Noving the St. Augustine War Memorial makes it looks like our veterans are racist, and not comfortable with having "their" memorial located just the other side of the Slave Market from the Civil Rights Foot Soldiers Monument.
Hence, if the City moved the St. Augustine War Memorial based on such specious grounds, it would make it look like the City was knuckling under to racists, of the ilk of the late Mayor Joseph A. Shelley, and the KKK members who got drunk at the American Legion before throwing bricks and punches at civil rights workers in 1964.
This could mean a civil rights lawsuit under the Fourteenth Amendment.
Leave the St. Augustine War Memorial where it is: the case has not been made from moving the monument. This is not even a tempest in a teapot -- it is a snare and a delusion.
Screen the electrical boxes and then we're done.
Put a scultpure on top and we've got a revivifed monument to St. Augustine's War Dead.
So the Record ran this superficial Sunday column from the son of St. Augustine's racist former Mayor Joseph Shelley on: (a) the day before the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday and (b) the day before the opening of the "Journey" exhibit on 450 years of African-American history here.
Why?
Nothing else available?
This is, at best, execrably bad timing and bad sociology. By printing the column from Mayor Shelley's son, the Record at best unwittingly and de facto gives aid and comfort to racists here, as evidenced by Shelley's line about the "real locals" here.
What did he mean by that fatuous statement, in his column ("Names on the monument deserve our respect")?
Here it is, in context: "My family roots run deep in the St. Augustine soil and you 'real locals' know what I am talking about if you remember reading any of my father's (the late Dr. Joseph A. Shelley) letters to The Record. It is in his spirit and his rich years of having been a community leader, local doctor and active politician that I write ths letter."
Are progressive, younger, newer, hipper or darker-pigmented St. Augustinians not "real locals" in the eyes of David P. Shelley?
How ethnocentric.
How insulting.
How deeply offensive and divisive.
It's like ultra-rightists who insist on dividing, calling themselves "real Americans," as opposed to all of the other Americans.
The direct reference to Mayor Shelley's letters to the newspaper assumedly embraces his threatening criminal arrests and lifetime blacklisting of demonstrators in his May 28, 1964 letter, quoted above ("Mayor Issues Statement on Seriousness of Taking Part in Demonstrations," St. Augustine Record),
The David P. Shelley column today is not so subtle after all -- this "dog whistle" to ex-Mayor Joseph Shelley's few remaining local supporters suggests that perhaps a few ultra-rightist plug uglies would like to manufacture political capital out of a few electrical boxes located near the war veterans' monument.
The KKK will never elect a Mayor or Commissioner again -- the chances are de micromis.
As former City Manager William Pomar once said, "The Bohemians have won."
Was this dull column really "fit to print?"
As LBJ said after Selma, "We SHALL overcome."
Today St. Augustine has two monuments to civil rights heroes and sheroes in our Slave Market Square, where the KKK once ran rampant, supported by Mayor Joseph Shelley.
Mayor Shelley is now but a bad memory, which was briefly revived by a frivolous, irrelevant editorial page column in today's newspaper.
What do you reckon?
You tell me.
Ed Slavin
www.cleanupcityofstaugustine.blogspot.com
Box 3084
St. Augustine, Florida 32085-3084
904-377-4998
POSTSCRIPT: Commissionrs Monday night approved moving the memorial 75 feet to the northwest along King street, directly opposite our Civil Rights Foot Soldiers Monument. Commissioners do not have jurisdiction over the park west of Government House. Putting the War Memorial there would have intefered with public access to the fountain, recenty rehabilitated with a donation from John Valdes, the visionary builder and PZB member who is running for City Commission. I pointed out that the literature indicates people don't like cutting off access to water features like fountains.
Saturday, January 18, 2014
COMCAST's Contempt for Democracy in Our Nation's Oldest City
Since late November 2013, COMCAST Cable has failed and refused to provide live COMCAST cable TV coverage of City Commission and board meetings.
This is a material breach of COMCAST's franchise contract.
Hesto presto, COMCAST must fix the problem, abjectly apologize, and pay $300/day liquidated damages.
Otherwise, COMCAST's franchise must be terminated for cause.
Enough flummery, dupery, nincompoopery, misfeasance, malfeasance and nonfeasance from COMCAST's inept, decripit corporate oligarchy.
COMCAST's inarticulate Florida employees are a disgrace, never explaining the "technical" problem to our City officials, as documented in documents examined pursuant to the Open Records law yesterday.
St. Augustine Beach and St. Johns County Commission have experienced similar problems with this rogue franchisee.
Enough!
This is a material breach of COMCAST's franchise contract.
Hesto presto, COMCAST must fix the problem, abjectly apologize, and pay $300/day liquidated damages.
Otherwise, COMCAST's franchise must be terminated for cause.
Enough flummery, dupery, nincompoopery, misfeasance, malfeasance and nonfeasance from COMCAST's inept, decripit corporate oligarchy.
COMCAST's inarticulate Florida employees are a disgrace, never explaining the "technical" problem to our City officials, as documented in documents examined pursuant to the Open Records law yesterday.
St. Augustine Beach and St. Johns County Commission have experienced similar problems with this rogue franchisee.
Enough!
Wednesday, January 15, 2014
Oklahoma!
The Honorable Terence Kern, United Sates District Court Judge in Bishop v. Oklahoma, the Oklahoma Gay Marriage case quotes Harriett Beecher Stowe's 1869 book, Old Town Folks," stating to one of the two Lesbian plaintiff couples: "never give up, for that is just the time and place where the tide will turn." slip op. at 18n25.
I was invited to write, and wrote, the first article on Gay Marriage for an American Bar Association publication (Human Rights) in 1991, having won jurisdiction and successfully settled the Rinde v. Woodward & Lothrop/John Wanamaker domestic partnership equal employee discount case in 1989-90.
As LBJ said in January 1965: "We shall overcome!"
I was invited to write, and wrote, the first article on Gay Marriage for an American Bar Association publication (Human Rights) in 1991, having won jurisdiction and successfully settled the Rinde v. Woodward & Lothrop/John Wanamaker domestic partnership equal employee discount case in 1989-90.
As LBJ said in January 1965: "We shall overcome!"
Objection, Improper Question! A Teachable Moment Brought to you by the Miami Herald and Tampa Bay Times
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click here to view the post.
NJ Governor CHRIS CHRISTIE Endorses Florida Governor RICHARD SCOTT
New Jersey Governor CHRIS CHRISIE will appear at three South Florida fundraisers for embattled Florida "Fifth Amendment" Governor RICHARD SCOTT.
It takes one to know one.
It takes one to know one.
Saving St. Augustine
Last week, the New Year was rightly rung in by the City of St. Augustine's visioning committee commencing work, and by the Planning and Zoning Board rejecting, 5-0, a tree-killing application by the University of Florida. Yes we can!
See below.
See below.
Governor RICHARD SCOTT Picks Another Developer As Lt. Governor
Florida Governor RICHARd SCOTT, our Fifth Amenndment Governor, who invoked his right against self-incrimination some 75 times in Medicare-Medicaid fraud depositions, has finally made up his mind on a running mate for re-elction.
SCOTT has picked a Miami-Dade County politiican, Property Appraiser CARLOS LOPEZ-CANTERA, as his Lt. Govrnor, replacing JENNIFER CARROLL of Jacksonville, a crook who resigned ten months ago. Republican veteran CARROLL resigned March 12, 2013 amid criminal indictments of her former employers at the ALLIED VETERANS $300 million gambling scam. Lt. Governor CARROLL was the first African-American and first woman Lt. Governor. Mr. LOPEZ-CANTERA is the first Hispanic Lt. Governor (the Spanish never had such a post and left in 1819). "I love the fact he's Hispanic," SCOTT said, stating he picked him for his "business skills."
The new Lt. Governor takes office on February 3, 2014, with no confirmation vote required under the Florida Constitution. The appointment moots a lawsuit by Democrats seeking to compel Governor SCOTT to fill the vacancy, which has existed for ten months.
In making the appointment, Governor SCOTT is seeking minority support, having been found to be "underperforming" in Hispanic communities. SCOT was elected Governor in 2010 by some 49,000 votes, having spent some $78 million of his own money on a campaign that featured bizarre hostile TV ads criticizing a mosque in lower Manhattan (an appeal to Islamophobic, Tea Party and KKK voters).
CARLOS LOPEZ-CANTRERA, as Florida House Republican whip, supported Gov. RICHARD SCOTT's anti-immigrant legislation, patterned after Arizona's laws, found to be unconstitutional. HB 7089 would have allowed warrantless of persons by local law enforcementer where there was probable cause to believe they were in the United States llegally.
Miami-Dade developer CARLOS LOPEZ-CANTRERA, who recently turned 40, was born two months premature, in Madrid, Spain, and raised in South FLorida by his parents; his father is a developer and so was our new Lt. Governor. Our new Lt. Governor is the former Florida House Republican Whip, and defeated an incumbent for Property Appraiser in 2012, running on the populist issue of lowering property appraisals based on home foreclosures in Miami-Dade. LOPEZ-CONTRERA is only the second elected property appraiser in Miami-Dade history. His campaign also focused on stopping fraudulent property tax exemptions and improving access to property tax data. He got 51.2% of the vote.
As a Florida State legislator, LOPEZ-CONTERA got all A's and A+'s from the NRA and an overall 97-A from the Florida Chamber of Commerce. He consistenty voted with pre-Cambrian and antebellum Republicans, and thus supported offshore oil drilling, voter suppression and education funding cuts. He was a close ally of MARCO RUBIO in the legislature, and helped push through the deep dredging of the Port of Miami, overcoming environmental concerns. In 2011, he reportedly supported Texas Governor Rick Perry for President. Mr. LOPEZ-CONTRERA was reportedly carrying a loaded gun pursuant to a concealed carry permit as early as 2005.
In 2012, the Washington Times paraphrased a LOPEZ-CANTERA speech supporting WILLARD MITT ROMNEY: "He pointed out that in the spirit of Halloween, conservativse should go to lierals and redistribute their Halloween candy to the conservatives. That would be the only way to explain to liberals how awful the economic redistributionist (sic) posicies of the last four years have been."
How trite.
While in the Florida state legislature, Mr. LOPEZ-CANTERA listed his office address as Suite 111, 2300 Coral Way, Miami, Florida. Curiously, this address is not listed on the MIAMI-DADE PROPERTY APPRAISER's website, but the address is shown on Mapquest as the CPA office of the late AMADA LOPEZ-CONTERA, 305-854-1040, who is listed on the Florida Secretary of State's office in connection with a slew of corporatons. The late AMADA LOPEZ-CANTERA was the late grandmother of Lt. Governor CARLOS LOPEZ-CANTERA, and she died in February 2013. Thus, AMADA-CANTERA apparently used office space provided by a family member for his state legislative office in Miami.
Also unlisted, as reported in the Miami Herald: LOPEZ-CONARA's residence, which was purchased for $745,000 in July 2011 and which CANTRARA's office assessed at $574,471 in 2013.
The website of the Bank of Coral Gables, viewed today, shows that the father of the new Lt. Governor, also named CARLOS LOPEZ-CANTERA, is President of "Pan-American Companies, a real estate developer which specializes in real estate investments alnd land economics." The website states is is a "registered architect, a real estate and mortgage broker, a licensed engineer and a contractor. He has been involved with th development of various types of real estate projects, includingofffice-industrial parks, hotels, office buildings and mixed used (sic) projects," stating he is former chair of the Florida construction Industry Licensing Board, 1988-94, serving as chair for two years. The website of the Florida Secretary of State lists CARLOS LOPEZ-CONTRERA Pan Amercan Companies as the sole drector of PAN AMERICAN COMPANIES. The firm's website states it manages hundreds of thousands of square feet of commercial property in South Florida.
Thus, Governor SCOTT has once again shown his affection for ultra-rightists, bankers and developers.
Little of this background has made its way into print. CARLOS LOPEZ-CANTRERA's wife reportedly works in the Miami Herald circulation department.
St. Johns County School Superintendent Dr. Joseph Joyner, Ed.D. was considered for the job, but withdrew his name in November.
At least Governor SCOTT did not pick controversial St. Johns County Sheriff DAVID B. SHOAR, whose unexplained refusal to recuse himself from "investigating" the shooting death of a deputy's girlfriend with the deputy's SJCSO handgun is a stench in the nostrils of the planet (thanks to the dogged investigation of the New York Times)
SCOTT has picked a Miami-Dade County politiican, Property Appraiser CARLOS LOPEZ-CANTERA, as his Lt. Govrnor, replacing JENNIFER CARROLL of Jacksonville, a crook who resigned ten months ago. Republican veteran CARROLL resigned March 12, 2013 amid criminal indictments of her former employers at the ALLIED VETERANS $300 million gambling scam. Lt. Governor CARROLL was the first African-American and first woman Lt. Governor. Mr. LOPEZ-CANTERA is the first Hispanic Lt. Governor (the Spanish never had such a post and left in 1819). "I love the fact he's Hispanic," SCOTT said, stating he picked him for his "business skills."
The new Lt. Governor takes office on February 3, 2014, with no confirmation vote required under the Florida Constitution. The appointment moots a lawsuit by Democrats seeking to compel Governor SCOTT to fill the vacancy, which has existed for ten months.
In making the appointment, Governor SCOTT is seeking minority support, having been found to be "underperforming" in Hispanic communities. SCOT was elected Governor in 2010 by some 49,000 votes, having spent some $78 million of his own money on a campaign that featured bizarre hostile TV ads criticizing a mosque in lower Manhattan (an appeal to Islamophobic, Tea Party and KKK voters).
CARLOS LOPEZ-CANTRERA, as Florida House Republican whip, supported Gov. RICHARD SCOTT's anti-immigrant legislation, patterned after Arizona's laws, found to be unconstitutional. HB 7089 would have allowed warrantless of persons by local law enforcementer where there was probable cause to believe they were in the United States llegally.
Miami-Dade developer CARLOS LOPEZ-CANTRERA, who recently turned 40, was born two months premature, in Madrid, Spain, and raised in South FLorida by his parents; his father is a developer and so was our new Lt. Governor. Our new Lt. Governor is the former Florida House Republican Whip, and defeated an incumbent for Property Appraiser in 2012, running on the populist issue of lowering property appraisals based on home foreclosures in Miami-Dade. LOPEZ-CONTRERA is only the second elected property appraiser in Miami-Dade history. His campaign also focused on stopping fraudulent property tax exemptions and improving access to property tax data. He got 51.2% of the vote.
As a Florida State legislator, LOPEZ-CONTERA got all A's and A+'s from the NRA and an overall 97-A from the Florida Chamber of Commerce. He consistenty voted with pre-Cambrian and antebellum Republicans, and thus supported offshore oil drilling, voter suppression and education funding cuts. He was a close ally of MARCO RUBIO in the legislature, and helped push through the deep dredging of the Port of Miami, overcoming environmental concerns. In 2011, he reportedly supported Texas Governor Rick Perry for President. Mr. LOPEZ-CONTRERA was reportedly carrying a loaded gun pursuant to a concealed carry permit as early as 2005.
In 2012, the Washington Times paraphrased a LOPEZ-CANTERA speech supporting WILLARD MITT ROMNEY: "He pointed out that in the spirit of Halloween, conservativse should go to lierals and redistribute their Halloween candy to the conservatives. That would be the only way to explain to liberals how awful the economic redistributionist (sic) posicies of the last four years have been."
How trite.
While in the Florida state legislature, Mr. LOPEZ-CANTERA listed his office address as Suite 111, 2300 Coral Way, Miami, Florida. Curiously, this address is not listed on the MIAMI-DADE PROPERTY APPRAISER's website, but the address is shown on Mapquest as the CPA office of the late AMADA LOPEZ-CONTERA, 305-854-1040, who is listed on the Florida Secretary of State's office in connection with a slew of corporatons. The late AMADA LOPEZ-CANTERA was the late grandmother of Lt. Governor CARLOS LOPEZ-CANTERA, and she died in February 2013. Thus, AMADA-CANTERA apparently used office space provided by a family member for his state legislative office in Miami.
Also unlisted, as reported in the Miami Herald: LOPEZ-CONARA's residence, which was purchased for $745,000 in July 2011 and which CANTRARA's office assessed at $574,471 in 2013.
The website of the Bank of Coral Gables, viewed today, shows that the father of the new Lt. Governor, also named CARLOS LOPEZ-CANTERA, is President of "Pan-American Companies, a real estate developer which specializes in real estate investments alnd land economics." The website states is is a "registered architect, a real estate and mortgage broker, a licensed engineer and a contractor. He has been involved with th development of various types of real estate projects, includingofffice-industrial parks, hotels, office buildings and mixed used (sic) projects," stating he is former chair of the Florida construction Industry Licensing Board, 1988-94, serving as chair for two years. The website of the Florida Secretary of State lists CARLOS LOPEZ-CONTRERA Pan Amercan Companies as the sole drector of PAN AMERICAN COMPANIES. The firm's website states it manages hundreds of thousands of square feet of commercial property in South Florida.
Thus, Governor SCOTT has once again shown his affection for ultra-rightists, bankers and developers.
Little of this background has made its way into print. CARLOS LOPEZ-CANTRERA's wife reportedly works in the Miami Herald circulation department.
St. Johns County School Superintendent Dr. Joseph Joyner, Ed.D. was considered for the job, but withdrew his name in November.
At least Governor SCOTT did not pick controversial St. Johns County Sheriff DAVID B. SHOAR, whose unexplained refusal to recuse himself from "investigating" the shooting death of a deputy's girlfriend with the deputy's SJCSO handgun is a stench in the nostrils of the planet (thanks to the dogged investigation of the New York Times)
Monday, January 06, 2014
Twelfth Night, 2014 -- Pray for Justice for Michelle O'Connell
My late friend and mentor Robin Nadeau died two years ago today at age 86.
It was Twelfth Night, her favorite holiday, when she would host a swell party where everyone got along famously, despite poliical differences. I fondly remember Robin in her 35 year old Christmasy red dress, which she made herself, sitting next to Senator George McGovern, talking about health care politics.
A convert to Catholicism and Canadian who became a naturalized citizen, she helped carry Alachua county (Gainesville) for George McGovern in 1972 -- the only county in Florida that McGovern carried).
She helped to make St. Augustine, St. Augustine Beach and St. Johns County a more beautiful and humane place, protecting trees, preserving land, halting promiscuous organophosphate spraying, reversing purchase of a luxury no-bid helicopter and protecting human rights forever.
We need more Robin Nadeaus, questing authority.
As Pulitzer Prize winning author Studs Terkel wrote of my friend and mentor Stetson Kennedy, in the New York Times Magazine in 2005 "With half a dozen Stetson Kennedys, we can transform our society into one of truth, grace ad beauty."
Robin Nadeau taught us to work for truth, beauty, justice and equality, with humor and grace.
She would be proud of the progress we've made here, winning GLBT rights measures enacted by the cities of S. Augustine Beach and S. Augustine.
She'd be plum tickled that the St. Augustine Record didn't run Ann Coulter's column today because, as Managing Editor Jim Sutton wrote me, it was "just too nasty."
She would have been appalled and delighted by the New York Times and PBS Frontline investigation of the Michelle O'Connell case -- "appalling" was one of her favorite words, and it fits what Sheriff DAVID SHOAR did when he refused to recuse himself. She would have been delighted with the perspicacity of the Times' investigation.
In Robin's honor, we're working to achieve a St. Augustine National Historical Park and National Seashore. www.staugustgreen.com
In Robin's honor, let's work for Justice for Michelle O'Connell in 2014.
Let's do it for Robin Nadeau.
Yes we can!
It was Twelfth Night, her favorite holiday, when she would host a swell party where everyone got along famously, despite poliical differences. I fondly remember Robin in her 35 year old Christmasy red dress, which she made herself, sitting next to Senator George McGovern, talking about health care politics.
A convert to Catholicism and Canadian who became a naturalized citizen, she helped carry Alachua county (Gainesville) for George McGovern in 1972 -- the only county in Florida that McGovern carried).
She helped to make St. Augustine, St. Augustine Beach and St. Johns County a more beautiful and humane place, protecting trees, preserving land, halting promiscuous organophosphate spraying, reversing purchase of a luxury no-bid helicopter and protecting human rights forever.
We need more Robin Nadeaus, questing authority.
As Pulitzer Prize winning author Studs Terkel wrote of my friend and mentor Stetson Kennedy, in the New York Times Magazine in 2005 "With half a dozen Stetson Kennedys, we can transform our society into one of truth, grace ad beauty."
Robin Nadeau taught us to work for truth, beauty, justice and equality, with humor and grace.
She would be proud of the progress we've made here, winning GLBT rights measures enacted by the cities of S. Augustine Beach and S. Augustine.
She'd be plum tickled that the St. Augustine Record didn't run Ann Coulter's column today because, as Managing Editor Jim Sutton wrote me, it was "just too nasty."
She would have been appalled and delighted by the New York Times and PBS Frontline investigation of the Michelle O'Connell case -- "appalling" was one of her favorite words, and it fits what Sheriff DAVID SHOAR did when he refused to recuse himself. She would have been delighted with the perspicacity of the Times' investigation.
In Robin's honor, we're working to achieve a St. Augustine National Historical Park and National Seashore. www.staugustgreen.com
In Robin's honor, let's work for Justice for Michelle O'Connell in 2014.
Let's do it for Robin Nadeau.
Yes we can!
Ann Coulter, Hatemonger, Not Printed in Today's St. Augustine Record
One of the drawbacks of Mondays in St. Augustine, Florida is reading Ann Coulter's column in the St. Augustine Record. FIred for hatemongering by William F. Buckley, Jr. and his National Review after 9/11, Ann Coulter continues her hatemongering career, laughing all the way to the bank.
Today's St. Augustine Record does not carry an Ann Coulter column. Wondering why, I viewed her website for nferential evidence as to why -- her unprinted column is as creepily homophobic a rant as ever appeared from the Anonymice on the St. Augustine Record's "Talk of the Town" website 2005-2006 in connection with the Rainbow Flags on the Bridge of Lions (some 32 loooing pages of loony diatribes, fatwahs and death threats, some written by local elected and appointed public officials under NICS, with the offenders sub silentio removing three pages of them after I called their hand).
Nazi Germany, the Nuremberg Laws, South African Apartheid and Jim Crow segregation taught the world not to practice group hatred.
Thanks to the St. Augustine Record for not printing Ann Coulter today.
We're on the world stage now and don't need to insult GLBT people, African-Americans, Hispanics and youth -- they are our customers -- tourists to be welcomed and not insulted -- our City's expected tourism growth demcgraphics.
Bigotry is bad for business.
Update: In an E-mail, St. Augustine Record Managing Editor Jim Sutton has confirmed that Ann Coulter was not printed today because her anti-Gay column was "too nasty."
Thank you!
Happy New Year!
Today's St. Augustine Record does not carry an Ann Coulter column. Wondering why, I viewed her website for nferential evidence as to why -- her unprinted column is as creepily homophobic a rant as ever appeared from the Anonymice on the St. Augustine Record's "Talk of the Town" website 2005-2006 in connection with the Rainbow Flags on the Bridge of Lions (some 32 loooing pages of loony diatribes, fatwahs and death threats, some written by local elected and appointed public officials under NICS, with the offenders sub silentio removing three pages of them after I called their hand).
Nazi Germany, the Nuremberg Laws, South African Apartheid and Jim Crow segregation taught the world not to practice group hatred.
Thanks to the St. Augustine Record for not printing Ann Coulter today.
We're on the world stage now and don't need to insult GLBT people, African-Americans, Hispanics and youth -- they are our customers -- tourists to be welcomed and not insulted -- our City's expected tourism growth demcgraphics.
Bigotry is bad for business.
Update: In an E-mail, St. Augustine Record Managing Editor Jim Sutton has confirmed that Ann Coulter was not printed today because her anti-Gay column was "too nasty."
Thank you!
Happy New Year!
St. Augustine Beach Must Reject Overbearng MARRIOTT Franchisee Demand to Reduce Drainage Payment by Marriott
Yesterday's New York Times revealed that Marriott, one of hte largest hotel corporations in the world, had net income of $475 million on revenue of $9.6 billion during the first nine months of 2013.
MARRIOTT and its franchisee don't need a reduction in the amount they are contractually obligated to pay the City of St. Augustine Beach to pay $566,000 for drainage improvements associated with its proposed Courtyard by Marriott.
Admitting the hotel will be built with or without the proposed concession, the developer should be told that the City of St. Augustine Beach will not renegotiate to its disadvantage.
The City of St. Augustine Beach needs vigorous, independent legal advice -- not lap doggery from DOUGLAS BURNETT, JR., the City Attorney, who mostly represents developers, and also represents a few governments (SAB, Airport) in the lapdog spirit of lawyer GEOFFREY DOBSON, longtime City of St. Augusine Beach City Attorney, longtime lawyer for nearly every other government in the county. DOBSON was a walking conflict of interest representing deveopers, an unjust steward who never saw a developer he did not kiss up to, while nearly saddling our Mosquito control District with an unneeded $1.8 million n-bod helicopter (which he claimed was "sole source").
No matter how charming the developer, no matter how generous he is with causes or candidates, his request must be DENIED.
MARRIOTT and its franchisee don't need a reduction in the amount they are contractually obligated to pay the City of St. Augustine Beach to pay $566,000 for drainage improvements associated with its proposed Courtyard by Marriott.
Admitting the hotel will be built with or without the proposed concession, the developer should be told that the City of St. Augustine Beach will not renegotiate to its disadvantage.
The City of St. Augustine Beach needs vigorous, independent legal advice -- not lap doggery from DOUGLAS BURNETT, JR., the City Attorney, who mostly represents developers, and also represents a few governments (SAB, Airport) in the lapdog spirit of lawyer GEOFFREY DOBSON, longtime City of St. Augusine Beach City Attorney, longtime lawyer for nearly every other government in the county. DOBSON was a walking conflict of interest representing deveopers, an unjust steward who never saw a developer he did not kiss up to, while nearly saddling our Mosquito control District with an unneeded $1.8 million n-bod helicopter (which he claimed was "sole source").
No matter how charming the developer, no matter how generous he is with causes or candidates, his request must be DENIED.
Unite to Save Trees Threatened by University of Florida
Is the University of Florida turning into another bad neighbor, like Flagler college and the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind?
First it gave a no-bid lease, without a sedcurity deposit, to the WHETSTONE family to take over operation of the Spanish Bakery.
Now UF wants to tear down a hughe old oak tree next door to the Spanish Bakery., which would deprive that beautiful place, and surrounding lots, of tree canopy.
Arborist Chuck Lippi's letter this morning to PZB must be respected -- there is no principled reason to tear down the trees here, supposedly to expand a restroom. UF must not be permitted to destroy one of the only old oaks along all of St. George Street.
Tomorrow's St. Augustine City Planning and Zoning Board meeting will consider UF's misbegotten application, which should be DENIED. It takes a village to save a tree. We've done it before and we'll do it again.
Happy New Year.
First it gave a no-bid lease, without a sedcurity deposit, to the WHETSTONE family to take over operation of the Spanish Bakery.
Now UF wants to tear down a hughe old oak tree next door to the Spanish Bakery., which would deprive that beautiful place, and surrounding lots, of tree canopy.
Arborist Chuck Lippi's letter this morning to PZB must be respected -- there is no principled reason to tear down the trees here, supposedly to expand a restroom. UF must not be permitted to destroy one of the only old oaks along all of St. George Street.
Tomorrow's St. Augustine City Planning and Zoning Board meeting will consider UF's misbegotten application, which should be DENIED. It takes a village to save a tree. We've done it before and we'll do it again.
Happy New Year.
Sunday, January 05, 2014
U.S. District Court Judge Brian J. Davis Confirmed; Of Course, Our St. Augustine Record Neglected to Report It
The Senate voted to confirm Nassau County Circuit Court Judge Brian J. Davis to be our new U.S. District Court Judge for the Middle District of Florida.
Congratulations!
The United States Senate rejected bigoted attacks from know-nothing Iowa Republican Charles Grassley, who has now opposed and lost on four (4) judicial nominations that were supported by the Republican Senators from the nominee's state.
Senator Grassey, a bigot and homophobe, scurrilously attacked Judge Davis for being too sensitive to African-Americans' rights, for defending Dr. Jocelyn Elders in a 1994 NAACP speech, for favoring equality, and for criticizing the mendacious civil rights decisions of a controversial former Monsanto corporate lawyer, tatterdemalion Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, whom outgoing Justice Thurgood Marshall famously compared to a "black snake."
Senator Charles Grassley said that Judge Brian Davis "views the world through a lens that I think is inappropriate and unacceptable for a District Court Judge."
I think that Iowa Republican Senator Charles Grassley, a racist sexist homophobe, is as lugubrious a goober as ever made a chair squeak.
Senator Charles Grassley's insincere effort to attack Judge Davis for defending Jocelyn Elders is a stench in the nostrils of teh nation.
Senator Charles Grassley is an embarassment to all thinking Iowans.
Most Iowans are good people, and should learn more about Senator Grassley's record if he ever seeks re-election. He has been in Congress since 1975, havng first been elected to the House to take the seat of Rep. H.R. Gross, one of my boyhood heroes, who took on waste, fraud and abuse. Grassley often does the same, and he likes whistleblowers.
Although U.S. Senator Charles Grassley is not even a lawyer, he has long been the top Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, where his works and pomps, whims and crotchets and his whiny, nasal voice and cognitive miser mien pull down the collective IQ and suck the energy right out of the room.
Senator Grassley's racist antics delayed Judge Davis' confirmation for some 660 days -- 22 months.
Due to Senator Grassley's animus on this and other judicial nominations, Senators finally eliminated filibusters for all nominations except Supreme Court nominations, resulting in Judge Davis' confirmation on December 20, 2013, by bipartisan vote of 68-26, after approving a motion to proceed by vote of 56-36.
Longtime Fourth Circuit State's Attorney Harry Shorestein named Brian Davis the first African-American Chief Assistant State's Attorney in the State of Florida in 1991; in 1994, Judge Davis was elected Circuit Judge.
Congratulations!
Judge Davis replaces the full-time position of Judge Henry Lee Adams, Jr., who has taken senior status. Like Judge Dvais, Judge Adams is an African-American.
Judge Adams ruled against the City of St. Augustine in several First Amendment cases, including our epic Rainbow flags case in 2005, leading to flying Rainbow flags on the Bridge of Lions June 8-13, 2005 in honor of Gay Pride.
The Middle District of Florida runs from Nassau, Duval and St. Johns Counties southwest across the state, embracing Orlando and Naples.
Of course, the St. Augustine Record has not exactly kept you up to date on Judge Davis' nomination for the past two years: no articles in its database, other than a passing mention in an article on a local member of the judicial nominating commission that recommended Judge Davis to Senators William Nelson and Mario Rubio.
The Orlando Sentinel, News4Jax, Fernandina Observer and Jacksonville Daily Record did report the confirmation vote. The Florida Times-Union reported the delays, but not the confirmation vote.
Hopelessly provincial Reichwing Republicans run the Record and they're continuing to run it into the ground. We deserve the news -- al of it.
As demonstrated by its illogical editorial on the Fourth Amendment (see below), the WReckord doesn't even known the difference between state and federal courts. It couldn't even bring itself to report Judge Brian Davis' confirmation vote. Wonder why?
They're dull Republicans and they don't look for news very much or work very hard -- "let 'em eat handouts from the Chamber of COmmerce" might as well be their motto.
We shall overcome!
Beware: If Republicans took the Senate in 2014, Charles Grassley would likely chair the Judiciary Committee, making him the most regressive Judiciary Committee Chair since James O. Eastland (D-Miss., 1956-78) and Strom Thurmond (R-S.C., 1981-1987). This energumen bears watchin'!
What do y'all reckon?
Congratulations!
The United States Senate rejected bigoted attacks from know-nothing Iowa Republican Charles Grassley, who has now opposed and lost on four (4) judicial nominations that were supported by the Republican Senators from the nominee's state.
Senator Grassey, a bigot and homophobe, scurrilously attacked Judge Davis for being too sensitive to African-Americans' rights, for defending Dr. Jocelyn Elders in a 1994 NAACP speech, for favoring equality, and for criticizing the mendacious civil rights decisions of a controversial former Monsanto corporate lawyer, tatterdemalion Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, whom outgoing Justice Thurgood Marshall famously compared to a "black snake."
Senator Charles Grassley said that Judge Brian Davis "views the world through a lens that I think is inappropriate and unacceptable for a District Court Judge."
I think that Iowa Republican Senator Charles Grassley, a racist sexist homophobe, is as lugubrious a goober as ever made a chair squeak.
Senator Charles Grassley's insincere effort to attack Judge Davis for defending Jocelyn Elders is a stench in the nostrils of teh nation.
Senator Charles Grassley is an embarassment to all thinking Iowans.
Most Iowans are good people, and should learn more about Senator Grassley's record if he ever seeks re-election. He has been in Congress since 1975, havng first been elected to the House to take the seat of Rep. H.R. Gross, one of my boyhood heroes, who took on waste, fraud and abuse. Grassley often does the same, and he likes whistleblowers.
Although U.S. Senator Charles Grassley is not even a lawyer, he has long been the top Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, where his works and pomps, whims and crotchets and his whiny, nasal voice and cognitive miser mien pull down the collective IQ and suck the energy right out of the room.
Senator Grassley's racist antics delayed Judge Davis' confirmation for some 660 days -- 22 months.
Due to Senator Grassley's animus on this and other judicial nominations, Senators finally eliminated filibusters for all nominations except Supreme Court nominations, resulting in Judge Davis' confirmation on December 20, 2013, by bipartisan vote of 68-26, after approving a motion to proceed by vote of 56-36.
Longtime Fourth Circuit State's Attorney Harry Shorestein named Brian Davis the first African-American Chief Assistant State's Attorney in the State of Florida in 1991; in 1994, Judge Davis was elected Circuit Judge.
Congratulations!
Judge Davis replaces the full-time position of Judge Henry Lee Adams, Jr., who has taken senior status. Like Judge Dvais, Judge Adams is an African-American.
Judge Adams ruled against the City of St. Augustine in several First Amendment cases, including our epic Rainbow flags case in 2005, leading to flying Rainbow flags on the Bridge of Lions June 8-13, 2005 in honor of Gay Pride.
The Middle District of Florida runs from Nassau, Duval and St. Johns Counties southwest across the state, embracing Orlando and Naples.
Of course, the St. Augustine Record has not exactly kept you up to date on Judge Davis' nomination for the past two years: no articles in its database, other than a passing mention in an article on a local member of the judicial nominating commission that recommended Judge Davis to Senators William Nelson and Mario Rubio.
The Orlando Sentinel, News4Jax, Fernandina Observer and Jacksonville Daily Record did report the confirmation vote. The Florida Times-Union reported the delays, but not the confirmation vote.
Hopelessly provincial Reichwing Republicans run the Record and they're continuing to run it into the ground. We deserve the news -- al of it.
As demonstrated by its illogical editorial on the Fourth Amendment (see below), the WReckord doesn't even known the difference between state and federal courts. It couldn't even bring itself to report Judge Brian Davis' confirmation vote. Wonder why?
They're dull Republicans and they don't look for news very much or work very hard -- "let 'em eat handouts from the Chamber of COmmerce" might as well be their motto.
We shall overcome!
Beware: If Republicans took the Senate in 2014, Charles Grassley would likely chair the Judiciary Committee, making him the most regressive Judiciary Committee Chair since James O. Eastland (D-Miss., 1956-78) and Strom Thurmond (R-S.C., 1981-1987). This energumen bears watchin'!
What do y'all reckon?
Friday, January 03, 2014
Ex-Goverrnor CHARLES CRIST of Florida Apologizes for His Cynical 2006 support for Florida's Anti-Gay Marriage Constitutional Amendment
Kudos.
I've been critical of CHARLES CRIST's environmental and human rights policies over the years, believing him to be a cynical opportunist. That goes double for his pal DANIEL GELBER, former Akerman Senterfitt lawyer and Democratic Attorney General candidate.
ChARLES CRIST destroyed Water Management District's power to protect our environment.
CHARLES CRIST actively supported a 2006 constitutional amendment to ban Gay marriage.
CHARLES CRIST was a Republican, then an Independent, and is now a Democrat.
Ex-Governor CHARLES CRIST has now apologized for his hateful position on Gay marriage.
Good for him.
CRIST was part of a Reichwing political machine that papered our state with anti-Gay hate. On March 15, 2005, the Gay-bashing fascists were even allowed to use the St. Johns County Convention Center, for free, after they made false statements in an application. St. Johns County Commissioner KAREN STERN made the motion to allow it. All of her colleagues agreed, 5-0. Two of them lost in the 2006 election (STERN AND BRUCE MAGUIRE).
St. Johns County Sheriff DAVID SHOAR's bully-boys threatened two women with arrest if anyone responded to their internet posts with First Amendment protected activity (protests), falsely claiming the $16.9 million County Convention Center was somehow "private property."
The Sheriff's Department lied. At least the Collective Press reported on it.
These were truly shameful acts, by shameful people.
They rallied, empowered and inspired Gays to win a June 7, 2005 federal court decision ordering Rainbow flags to fly on our historic Bridge of Lions for Gay Pride.
I remember crossing the Bridge of Lions the evening of March 15, 2005, after ALAN KEYES's homophobic Nuremberg style hate rally: I resolved to do the historic research that led to the U.S. District Court decision. Twice before GLBT people were told "no" by St. Augustine City Commissioners, who did not even put it to a vote. The discriminatory refusal to fly GLBT flags May 23, 2005 led to a Federal Court victory only two weeks later, on June 7, 2005.
We won.
In 2008, St. Johns County Commissioners proposed a charter (twice) on the ballot -- among other provisions, it left GLBT people out of the putative non-discrimination provision (Section 10.06).
They lost.
Twice.
Voters rightly rejected their bigoted, half-baked Charter.
CHARLES CRIST has now apologized for supporting a Nuremberg law banning Gays from marrying -- it is bad for equality, bad for tourism and bad for human and civil rights.
CHARLES CRIST was right to apologize. Confession is good for the soul.
As to CRIST's other past ill-advised policies, "repent now, Mr. CRIST!"
I've been critical of CHARLES CRIST's environmental and human rights policies over the years, believing him to be a cynical opportunist. That goes double for his pal DANIEL GELBER, former Akerman Senterfitt lawyer and Democratic Attorney General candidate.
ChARLES CRIST destroyed Water Management District's power to protect our environment.
CHARLES CRIST actively supported a 2006 constitutional amendment to ban Gay marriage.
CHARLES CRIST was a Republican, then an Independent, and is now a Democrat.
Ex-Governor CHARLES CRIST has now apologized for his hateful position on Gay marriage.
Good for him.
CRIST was part of a Reichwing political machine that papered our state with anti-Gay hate. On March 15, 2005, the Gay-bashing fascists were even allowed to use the St. Johns County Convention Center, for free, after they made false statements in an application. St. Johns County Commissioner KAREN STERN made the motion to allow it. All of her colleagues agreed, 5-0. Two of them lost in the 2006 election (STERN AND BRUCE MAGUIRE).
St. Johns County Sheriff DAVID SHOAR's bully-boys threatened two women with arrest if anyone responded to their internet posts with First Amendment protected activity (protests), falsely claiming the $16.9 million County Convention Center was somehow "private property."
The Sheriff's Department lied. At least the Collective Press reported on it.
These were truly shameful acts, by shameful people.
They rallied, empowered and inspired Gays to win a June 7, 2005 federal court decision ordering Rainbow flags to fly on our historic Bridge of Lions for Gay Pride.
I remember crossing the Bridge of Lions the evening of March 15, 2005, after ALAN KEYES's homophobic Nuremberg style hate rally: I resolved to do the historic research that led to the U.S. District Court decision. Twice before GLBT people were told "no" by St. Augustine City Commissioners, who did not even put it to a vote. The discriminatory refusal to fly GLBT flags May 23, 2005 led to a Federal Court victory only two weeks later, on June 7, 2005.
We won.
In 2008, St. Johns County Commissioners proposed a charter (twice) on the ballot -- among other provisions, it left GLBT people out of the putative non-discrimination provision (Section 10.06).
They lost.
Twice.
Voters rightly rejected their bigoted, half-baked Charter.
CHARLES CRIST has now apologized for supporting a Nuremberg law banning Gays from marrying -- it is bad for equality, bad for tourism and bad for human and civil rights.
CHARLES CRIST was right to apologize. Confession is good for the soul.
As to CRIST's other past ill-advised policies, "repent now, Mr. CRIST!"
Governor RICHARD SCOTT and Attorney General PAMELA BONDI and State Legislature Must Apologize for Rampant Fourth Amendment Violations
FLORI-DUH. It's run by wretched rampant Fourth Amendment violators, including lawyer RICHARD SCOTT, our Fifth Amendment Governor, lawyer PAM BONDI, our retaliatory Attorney General, lobbyists and the reporbates in the one-party FLORI-DUH State Legislature.
The Eleventh Circuit court of Appeals in 2012 affirmed a preiminary innjunction, and a United States Dstridt Judge December 31, 2013 entered a permanent injunction, barring the state from drug-testing everyone who applies for welfare.
United States Supreme Court decsions establish beyond peradventure that a drug test is a search. When a government drug tests people, it must have a good reason. Hating poor people is not enough.
None of the putative "facts" and reasons offered by the State of Florida passed muster, or was even admissible. Junk science, junk evidence and junk policy were rightly rejected.
Governments may lawfully drug test people involved in public heath and safety, without a reasonable suspicioun or a warrant.
They may also drug test people involved in public schools.
That's it.
This is a question of constitutional law.
Other than that, there must be some symptoms or indicia to justify a drug test.
In Florida, the rate of drug use among welfare applicants was found to be insignificant.
Among those few applicants testing found using drugs, half were merely for pot.
There was no alcohol testing.
None.
Why?
If drugs threaten famililies, what about aloholism?
Under Florida statute 414.0652, there was no testing for alchohol - only drugs -- a testimony to the power of the Liquor Lobby in Tallahassee, and an example of hypocrisy.
The drug testing cost more money than it saved, while holding out poor people for Fouth Amendment violations.
This drug obsession of Republican reprobate Florida Governor RICHARD SCOTT and Attorney General PAMELA BONDI does not distract from their being in bed with Big Business.
Picking on poor people -- how depraved and unoriginal. What do you expect from our Fifth Amendment Governor, RICHARD SCOTT?
The plaintiff, a Navy veteran, Luis Lebron, cares for his disabled mother and has sole custody of his five year old son. He declined to take a drug test. He doesn't use drugs. He resented the intrusion.
Thank you, Luis Lebron, to standing up to arbitrary power and oppression, which our American Founding Fathers wrote in our Declaration of Independence we need to stand up to with "manly firmness."
No thanks to the St. Augustine Record for a sloppy editorial on the subject this morning, all demagogy and polling and posturing and self-importance, unadorned by any indicia of reading the Judge's decision, or that of the Eleventh Circuit.
So, in an E-mail, I asked the Records' edtorial page editor if he read the decision -- his response was elliptical (it did not say either "yes" or "no").
I have sent him a link to the decision.
Repent now, Jim Sutton!
The fact that the St. Augustine Record chooses to drug test its employees is of no significance to the Fourth Amendment issue -- when the Record does it, it is not state action.
(It does indicate that the St. Augustine Record badly needs a union; here is apparently no chapter of the Newspaper Guild anywhere in the entire state of Florida).
Polling is irrelevant to constitutional rights -- it's a make-weight argument.
The fact that, even after remand from the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, the State of FLorida could not get past summary judgment shows that there is no merit to drug testing all welfare applicants under the Fourth Amendment.
Explaining court decisions intelligenty is what journalists are supposed to do.
Failing that, they have the right to remain silent, and we wish they would!
I am reminded of former Senator Ernest "Fritz" Hollings of South Carolina, who was once challenged by an opponent to take a drug test. Senator Hollings said, "I'll take a drug test when he takes an IQ test."
The Fourth Amendment lives in the State of FLorida today thanks to Luis Lebron, ACLU, and the Eleventh Circuit Courrt of Appeals and United States Dstrict Court for the Middle District of Florida.
Three cheers!
Postscript: The Record confirmed its ignorance the next day, on January 4, 2014, when it gave one of its Roman Emperor "thumbs down" to a state court of appeals for the decision of the federal courts on Florida's Fourth Amendment violations.
Not only did the Record not read the decision in quo, it doesn't even know what kind of court decided it. This is ignorance.
The Eleventh Circuit court of Appeals in 2012 affirmed a preiminary innjunction, and a United States Dstridt Judge December 31, 2013 entered a permanent injunction, barring the state from drug-testing everyone who applies for welfare.
United States Supreme Court decsions establish beyond peradventure that a drug test is a search. When a government drug tests people, it must have a good reason. Hating poor people is not enough.
None of the putative "facts" and reasons offered by the State of Florida passed muster, or was even admissible. Junk science, junk evidence and junk policy were rightly rejected.
Governments may lawfully drug test people involved in public heath and safety, without a reasonable suspicioun or a warrant.
They may also drug test people involved in public schools.
That's it.
This is a question of constitutional law.
Other than that, there must be some symptoms or indicia to justify a drug test.
In Florida, the rate of drug use among welfare applicants was found to be insignificant.
Among those few applicants testing found using drugs, half were merely for pot.
There was no alcohol testing.
None.
Why?
If drugs threaten famililies, what about aloholism?
Under Florida statute 414.0652, there was no testing for alchohol - only drugs -- a testimony to the power of the Liquor Lobby in Tallahassee, and an example of hypocrisy.
The drug testing cost more money than it saved, while holding out poor people for Fouth Amendment violations.
This drug obsession of Republican reprobate Florida Governor RICHARD SCOTT and Attorney General PAMELA BONDI does not distract from their being in bed with Big Business.
Picking on poor people -- how depraved and unoriginal. What do you expect from our Fifth Amendment Governor, RICHARD SCOTT?
The plaintiff, a Navy veteran, Luis Lebron, cares for his disabled mother and has sole custody of his five year old son. He declined to take a drug test. He doesn't use drugs. He resented the intrusion.
Thank you, Luis Lebron, to standing up to arbitrary power and oppression, which our American Founding Fathers wrote in our Declaration of Independence we need to stand up to with "manly firmness."
No thanks to the St. Augustine Record for a sloppy editorial on the subject this morning, all demagogy and polling and posturing and self-importance, unadorned by any indicia of reading the Judge's decision, or that of the Eleventh Circuit.
So, in an E-mail, I asked the Records' edtorial page editor if he read the decision -- his response was elliptical (it did not say either "yes" or "no").
I have sent him a link to the decision.
Repent now, Jim Sutton!
The fact that the St. Augustine Record chooses to drug test its employees is of no significance to the Fourth Amendment issue -- when the Record does it, it is not state action.
(It does indicate that the St. Augustine Record badly needs a union; here is apparently no chapter of the Newspaper Guild anywhere in the entire state of Florida).
Polling is irrelevant to constitutional rights -- it's a make-weight argument.
The fact that, even after remand from the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, the State of FLorida could not get past summary judgment shows that there is no merit to drug testing all welfare applicants under the Fourth Amendment.
Explaining court decisions intelligenty is what journalists are supposed to do.
Failing that, they have the right to remain silent, and we wish they would!
I am reminded of former Senator Ernest "Fritz" Hollings of South Carolina, who was once challenged by an opponent to take a drug test. Senator Hollings said, "I'll take a drug test when he takes an IQ test."
The Fourth Amendment lives in the State of FLorida today thanks to Luis Lebron, ACLU, and the Eleventh Circuit Courrt of Appeals and United States Dstrict Court for the Middle District of Florida.
Three cheers!
Postscript: The Record confirmed its ignorance the next day, on January 4, 2014, when it gave one of its Roman Emperor "thumbs down" to a state court of appeals for the decision of the federal courts on Florida's Fourth Amendment violations.
Not only did the Record not read the decision in quo, it doesn't even know what kind of court decided it. This is ignorance.
Monday, December 30, 2013
SAPD Wins Conviction, 100 Day Jail Term, For Anti-Gay Battery With Bug Spray At Home Depot
Republican St. Johns County County Commission candidate MERRILL PAUL ROLAND, 59, spent Christmas in the St. Johns County Jail. He checked in to St. Johns County Jail on December 24, 2013. He won't be allowed out until April 3, 2014. ROLAND will spend the entire winter as an inmate of the St. Johns County Jail, whose published inmate rules allow viewing only one (1) television station: PBS.
A registered Republican, a perennial sjx-time political candidate, a St. George Street pirate entertainer-activist and an Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) disabilities access activist, MERRILL PAUL ROLAND has repeatedly run for office.
MERRILL ROLAND was convicted by a jury of first degree battery December 23, 2013.
St. Johns County Court Judge Alex Christine sentenced ROLAND to 100 days in jail, with no credit; to anger management classes; to pay $300 restitution to his victim; and to 364 days probation.
Convicted batterer MERRILL PAUL ROLAND was convicted by unanimous jury verdict of spraying bug spray in the face of a man at Home Depot -- a man whom he first called homosexual in front of the man's girlfriend and the man's mother. The two had prior business deaings at a scooter rental store.
First degree battery charges were filed after the bug-spraying battery on July 10, 2013 at Home Depot in St. Augustine by the victim, a 28-year old white man, after an investigation by the St. Augustine Police Departmnt. The State's Attorney's office prosecuted the case. County Commission candidate MERRILL PAUL ROLAND defended himself pro se, after repeatedly waiving his right to counsel.
Based on Justice Department guidelines, the City of St. Augustine Police Deparemnt is now likely to report the State of Florida v. MERRILL PAUL ROLAND
No local news media of any kind, print or electronic, serving St. Johns County reported the MERRILL PAUL ROLAND conviction as involving a hate crime (calling somoneone homosexual and spraying bug spray in his face). Why? Query: Does any journalist who is not working for the New York Times bother to read our local police reports?
If this apparent anti-Gay hate crime had occured in St. Johns County -- outside the territorial limits of the City of St. Augustine, in controversial St. Johns County Sheriff DAVID SHOAR's jurisdiction -- what might have happened?
1. A standing ovation led by Sheriff SHOAR, like in the Michelle O'Connell shooting case (as seen on PBS Frontline and in the New York Times)? See below/
2. A flagrant failure to obtain forensic evidence? (Ditto).
3. Some cockamamie story that defies the laws of physics (or chemistry in this case)? (Ditto).
4. Edicts and ukases contrary to the rules of scientific evidence, including "junk science" masquerading as scientific "evidence?" (Ditto).
One thing is for certain: when the St. Augustine City Manager is honorable, our police officers can do their job. Thanks to City Manager John Patrick Regan, P.E., since mid-2010, St. Augustine Police can make correct decisions, uncontaminated by corrupt county machine politics, unbossed and unbullied by conflicts of interest.
Bullies, be afraid. Miscreant misanthropes: knock it off. Peace!
No more should anyone expect that good-ole-boy "Do you know who I am!?" incantations will work as proverbial "get out of jail free cards." (After one of ex-City Commissioner ERROL B. JONES' arrests, some City Commissioners joked they were considering bying nametags asking, "Do you know who I am!?" (That's what then-Commissioner JONES actually said to SAPD in 2012, shortly before his arrest).
A registered Republican, a perennial sjx-time political candidate, a St. George Street pirate entertainer-activist and an Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) disabilities access activist, MERRILL PAUL ROLAND has repeatedly run for office.
MERRILL ROLAND was convicted by a jury of first degree battery December 23, 2013.
St. Johns County Court Judge Alex Christine sentenced ROLAND to 100 days in jail, with no credit; to anger management classes; to pay $300 restitution to his victim; and to 364 days probation.
Convicted batterer MERRILL PAUL ROLAND was convicted by unanimous jury verdict of spraying bug spray in the face of a man at Home Depot -- a man whom he first called homosexual in front of the man's girlfriend and the man's mother. The two had prior business deaings at a scooter rental store.
First degree battery charges were filed after the bug-spraying battery on July 10, 2013 at Home Depot in St. Augustine by the victim, a 28-year old white man, after an investigation by the St. Augustine Police Departmnt. The State's Attorney's office prosecuted the case. County Commission candidate MERRILL PAUL ROLAND defended himself pro se, after repeatedly waiving his right to counsel.
Based on Justice Department guidelines, the City of St. Augustine Police Deparemnt is now likely to report the State of Florida v. MERRILL PAUL ROLAND
No local news media of any kind, print or electronic, serving St. Johns County reported the MERRILL PAUL ROLAND conviction as involving a hate crime (calling somoneone homosexual and spraying bug spray in his face). Why? Query: Does any journalist who is not working for the New York Times bother to read our local police reports?
If this apparent anti-Gay hate crime had occured in St. Johns County -- outside the territorial limits of the City of St. Augustine, in controversial St. Johns County Sheriff DAVID SHOAR's jurisdiction -- what might have happened?
1. A standing ovation led by Sheriff SHOAR, like in the Michelle O'Connell shooting case (as seen on PBS Frontline and in the New York Times)? See below/
2. A flagrant failure to obtain forensic evidence? (Ditto).
3. Some cockamamie story that defies the laws of physics (or chemistry in this case)? (Ditto).
4. Edicts and ukases contrary to the rules of scientific evidence, including "junk science" masquerading as scientific "evidence?" (Ditto).
One thing is for certain: when the St. Augustine City Manager is honorable, our police officers can do their job. Thanks to City Manager John Patrick Regan, P.E., since mid-2010, St. Augustine Police can make correct decisions, uncontaminated by corrupt county machine politics, unbossed and unbullied by conflicts of interest.
Bullies, be afraid. Miscreant misanthropes: knock it off. Peace!
No more should anyone expect that good-ole-boy "Do you know who I am!?" incantations will work as proverbial "get out of jail free cards." (After one of ex-City Commissioner ERROL B. JONES' arrests, some City Commissioners joked they were considering bying nametags asking, "Do you know who I am!?" (That's what then-Commissioner JONES actually said to SAPD in 2012, shortly before his arrest).
Tuesday, December 24, 2013
Christmas Eve, 2013
This is Alexis O'Connell's fourth Christmas without her mother, Michelle O'Connell, shot to death with her boyfriend's St. Johns County Sheriff's Department handgun on September 2, 2010.
Hopes, prayers and best wishes to Alexis and the O'Connell family for Chrismas and tne New Year.
Justice for Michelle O'Connell!
In the New Year, I look forward to helping hold governments accountable, as I have done since college days at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.
Never again will St. Augustine and St. Johns County residents worship the power-hungry political machine here. We've seen the New York Times and PBS Frontline stories, and we know what they do -- we see right through their works and pomps.
St. Johns County Sheriff DAVID SHOAR claims he has not watched the PBS Frontline story, "A Death in St. Augustine."
Do you believe SHOAR?
The whole world is watching and SHOAR says he refuses to watch the program, which is on the Internet forever.
At the St. Johns County Jail, published policies say that PBS is the only TV channel that inmates may watch. Did the inmates watch the Frontline story? Do they believe that SHOAR wasn't watching when his own overt acts were on national teleision?
If SHOAR didn't watch, why?
Guilty conscience? Cognitive dissonance? Or more lies?
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas famously claimed in 1991 that he refused to watch Anita Hill's testimony on national television.
Guilty conscience? Cognitive dissonance? Or more lies?
Like Clarence Thomas, SHERIFF DAVID SHOAR is caught in the searchlight of national publicity, lying about his own wrongdoing. Like Clarence Thomas, SHERIFF DAVID SHOAR is pretending that he and his deputy are the victims. SHERIFF DAVID SHOAR's apparatchik acolyte, MICHAEL GOLD, writes on his website (HISTORIC CITY NEWS) that there is a "witch hunt." Clarence Thomas said he was subjected to a "high-tech lynching." Both men are dull self-righteous Republican reprobates, lacking in character, who can only ululate. They are nothing for anyone to emulate.
Justice Clarance Thomas was a sexual harasser.
SHERIFF DAVID SHOAR covered up domestic violenc involving his own deputies, refusing to recuse himself in the case of a shooting of a deputy's girlfriend with a service revolver, icredibly and impossible ascribed to "suicide."
SHERIFF SHOAR has rebutted none of the forensic evidence.
"Witch hunt?"
Go tell that to the O'Connell family, whom SHOAR never bothered to speak with after the death of Michelle O'Connell.
SHOAR should have recused himself and his entire department. It was a blatant conflict of interest for deputies to investigate their colleague and friend, whose family SHOAR has known "for a long, long, long time."
The shoddy non-investigation of the Michelle O'Connell shooting death reflects discredit on St. Johns County. We need a woman Sheriff, a new State's Attorney, a new Medical Examiner, and County Commissioners with guts. We need a County Charter, an Inspector General, and an Ombuds, and never again must a Sheriff be permitted to rule without accountability. Enough of vile Caudillos like SHOAR and the late racist reprobate KKK member Sheriff LAWRENCE O. DAVIS (1949-70), removed by Florida's Governor and State Senate for corruption, who is fulsomely praised on Sheriff SHOAR's website, with multiple falsehoods (including how the State Senate exonerated him).
SHERIFF DAVID SHOAR is no martyr, and many believe he is shielding a possible murderer in his ranks.
Again, Alexis O'Connell, age 7, is spending her fourth Christmas without her mother, Michelle O'Connell.
Justice for Michelle O'Connell in 2014.
As Albert Gore, Sr. said on Election night 1970, "The truth shall rise again!"'
Justice for Michelle O'Connell in 2014!
Hopes, prayers and best wishes to Alexis and the O'Connell family for Chrismas and tne New Year.
Justice for Michelle O'Connell!
In the New Year, I look forward to helping hold governments accountable, as I have done since college days at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.
Never again will St. Augustine and St. Johns County residents worship the power-hungry political machine here. We've seen the New York Times and PBS Frontline stories, and we know what they do -- we see right through their works and pomps.
St. Johns County Sheriff DAVID SHOAR claims he has not watched the PBS Frontline story, "A Death in St. Augustine."
Do you believe SHOAR?
The whole world is watching and SHOAR says he refuses to watch the program, which is on the Internet forever.
At the St. Johns County Jail, published policies say that PBS is the only TV channel that inmates may watch. Did the inmates watch the Frontline story? Do they believe that SHOAR wasn't watching when his own overt acts were on national teleision?
If SHOAR didn't watch, why?
Guilty conscience? Cognitive dissonance? Or more lies?
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas famously claimed in 1991 that he refused to watch Anita Hill's testimony on national television.
Guilty conscience? Cognitive dissonance? Or more lies?
Like Clarence Thomas, SHERIFF DAVID SHOAR is caught in the searchlight of national publicity, lying about his own wrongdoing. Like Clarence Thomas, SHERIFF DAVID SHOAR is pretending that he and his deputy are the victims. SHERIFF DAVID SHOAR's apparatchik acolyte, MICHAEL GOLD, writes on his website (HISTORIC CITY NEWS) that there is a "witch hunt." Clarence Thomas said he was subjected to a "high-tech lynching." Both men are dull self-righteous Republican reprobates, lacking in character, who can only ululate. They are nothing for anyone to emulate.
Justice Clarance Thomas was a sexual harasser.
SHERIFF DAVID SHOAR covered up domestic violenc involving his own deputies, refusing to recuse himself in the case of a shooting of a deputy's girlfriend with a service revolver, icredibly and impossible ascribed to "suicide."
SHERIFF SHOAR has rebutted none of the forensic evidence.
"Witch hunt?"
Go tell that to the O'Connell family, whom SHOAR never bothered to speak with after the death of Michelle O'Connell.
SHOAR should have recused himself and his entire department. It was a blatant conflict of interest for deputies to investigate their colleague and friend, whose family SHOAR has known "for a long, long, long time."
The shoddy non-investigation of the Michelle O'Connell shooting death reflects discredit on St. Johns County. We need a woman Sheriff, a new State's Attorney, a new Medical Examiner, and County Commissioners with guts. We need a County Charter, an Inspector General, and an Ombuds, and never again must a Sheriff be permitted to rule without accountability. Enough of vile Caudillos like SHOAR and the late racist reprobate KKK member Sheriff LAWRENCE O. DAVIS (1949-70), removed by Florida's Governor and State Senate for corruption, who is fulsomely praised on Sheriff SHOAR's website, with multiple falsehoods (including how the State Senate exonerated him).
SHERIFF DAVID SHOAR is no martyr, and many believe he is shielding a possible murderer in his ranks.
Again, Alexis O'Connell, age 7, is spending her fourth Christmas without her mother, Michelle O'Connell.
Justice for Michelle O'Connell in 2014.
As Albert Gore, Sr. said on Election night 1970, "The truth shall rise again!"'
Justice for Michelle O'Connell in 2014!
Monday, December 23, 2013
Why does baloney reject the grinder?
Rebarbative reprobate DAVID B. SHOAR f/k/a "DAVID HOAR" has a loyal henchman, apparatchik and hey-boy in MICHAEL GOLD f/k/a "MICHAEL TOBIN," who has operated local hate websites and runs somethng he calls "HISTORIC CITY NEWS," www.historiccity.com, which may also be reached by going to www.davidshoar.com.
Tortfeasor MICHAEL GOLD f/k/a "MICHAEL TOBIN" has attacked The New York Times, PBS Frontline, the St. Augustine Record, Jacksonville Journal and Florida Times Union for reporting the truth about Sheriff DAVID SHOAR. (Editorial, December 22, 2013, "When does obsession become malice?", mockingly opining inter alia that the Record "look[s] foolish and malicously motivated when" it "contues to drag out this dead horse and beat it some more," opining further that 60 Minutes will not dare cover the O'Connnell shooting story and that Governor RICHARD SCOTT will not dare do anything about it, either).
Sheriff DAVID SHOAR should have recused himself when the girlfriend of a deputy was shot and killed with the deputy's handgun.
Chief Loran Lueders and Chief Robert Hardwick, the Police Chiefs of the City of St. Augustine and the City of St. Augustine Beach both would have recused themselves. Anyone with a lick of horse sense would have done so.
Evidently, Sheriff DAVID SHOAR does not have any common sense. He has become a crooked politician who works for developers nad other wrongdoers. SHOAR sold his soul long ago. God forgive him.
Sheriff DAVID SHOAR, unrepentant, refusing to apologize, recently told the St. Augustine Record he should have gone to the Michelle O'Connell shooting crime scene on September 2, 2010.
That dog won't hunt.
Nope. Our dopey Sheriff should have recused himself. Instanter.
Chief Justice Earl Warren, writing for the United States Supreme Court sad in United States v. Mississippi Valley Generating Company said that all conflict of interest laws are based upon the book of Matthew, in the Bible, which states, "A man cannot serve two masters." Ironically, Sheriff SHOAR named his only son Matthew. Sheriff SHOAR is a practicing Roman Catholic who sings in a choir, and who well knows the standard of care for investigations, having graduated with honors in public administration, and from two (2) FBI Academies
In 2010, Sheriff SHOAR scotched criticism of rampant SJCSO Officer Involved Domestic Violence (OIDV) by refusing to recuse himself in the O'Connnell shooting case.
Sheriff DAVID SHOAR was elected thrice, two times without opposition, because his bagmen, MICHAEL GOLD and former City Manager WILLIAM B. HARRISS, raised $250,000 for his 2004 election campaign from developers. That's the gift that keeps on giving to developers and other corrupters in St. Johns County.
Now MICHAEL GOLD attacks five (5) media outlets for seeking the truth. MICHAEL GOLD mocks the notion that Governor RICHARD SCOTT might do the right thing and take action. GOLD's probably right.
This is the fourth Christmas that Alexis O'Connell has spent without her mother, Michelle O'Connell.
Michelle O'Connell's very suspicious alleged shooting with a deputy's handgun does not look like "suicide." The ethically challenged State's Attorney7s and Medical Examiner look awful -- their sophistry defies the laws of physics. The conflicted non-investigation of the shooting by the deputy's colleagues and friends defies the laws of conflict of interest.
The O'Connell family deserves answers.
The people of St. Johns County -- and the United Sates of America -- deserve the truth. All of it. Now.
Truth is not flowing from the mouths of Sheriff DAVID B. SHOAR, his mouthpieces and minions (including his brother-in-law CHARLES MULLLIGAN, his General Counsel MATTHEW CLINE and his outside counsel JON KANEY, once a respected First Amendment lawyer and now a legal prostitute, whom SHOAR paid with your money at least nearly $10,000 to help SHOAR evade, avoid and escape press questions).
The federal government is empowered to prosecute civil rights violations by local police. The feds recetly indicted some 20 Los Angeles County, California Sheriff's Deputies for cirvil rights vioaltions. The Justice Department has a distinguisedhed record (commencing under my late mentor St. John Barrett) of prosecuting criminal civil rights violations by law enforcement and the KKK, including the killers of civil rights workers in Mississippi.
Thus, the answer is federal, not state law.
We hope and pray that a federal grand jury, sworn to secrecy under Rule 6 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, will subpoena SHERIFF DAVID SHOAR and his henchmen, apparatchiks and hey-boys, including MICHAEL GOLD and JON KANEY.
Questions must be asked about the O'Connell case and obstruction of justice, perjury, civil rights violations, mail fraud, wire fraud, and corrupton.
Will Sheriff DAVID SHOAR, MICHAEL GOLD and JON KANEY invoke their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination?
Will justice be done?
Or will this case, as so many in the hstory of St. Johns County, be "fixed?"
Satrap St. Johns County Sheriff DAVID SHOAR remained silent during nine (9) months of investigations by the Times and Frontline.
Sheriff SHOAR refused to answer questions. One must ask of SHOAR, in the immortal words of William F. Buckley, Jr, "Why does baloney reject the grinder?"
Tortfeasor MICHAEL GOLD f/k/a "MICHAEL TOBIN" has attacked The New York Times, PBS Frontline, the St. Augustine Record, Jacksonville Journal and Florida Times Union for reporting the truth about Sheriff DAVID SHOAR. (Editorial, December 22, 2013, "When does obsession become malice?", mockingly opining inter alia that the Record "look[s] foolish and malicously motivated when" it "contues to drag out this dead horse and beat it some more," opining further that 60 Minutes will not dare cover the O'Connnell shooting story and that Governor RICHARD SCOTT will not dare do anything about it, either).
Sheriff DAVID SHOAR should have recused himself when the girlfriend of a deputy was shot and killed with the deputy's handgun.
Chief Loran Lueders and Chief Robert Hardwick, the Police Chiefs of the City of St. Augustine and the City of St. Augustine Beach both would have recused themselves. Anyone with a lick of horse sense would have done so.
Evidently, Sheriff DAVID SHOAR does not have any common sense. He has become a crooked politician who works for developers nad other wrongdoers. SHOAR sold his soul long ago. God forgive him.
Sheriff DAVID SHOAR, unrepentant, refusing to apologize, recently told the St. Augustine Record he should have gone to the Michelle O'Connell shooting crime scene on September 2, 2010.
That dog won't hunt.
Nope. Our dopey Sheriff should have recused himself. Instanter.
Chief Justice Earl Warren, writing for the United States Supreme Court sad in United States v. Mississippi Valley Generating Company said that all conflict of interest laws are based upon the book of Matthew, in the Bible, which states, "A man cannot serve two masters." Ironically, Sheriff SHOAR named his only son Matthew. Sheriff SHOAR is a practicing Roman Catholic who sings in a choir, and who well knows the standard of care for investigations, having graduated with honors in public administration, and from two (2) FBI Academies
In 2010, Sheriff SHOAR scotched criticism of rampant SJCSO Officer Involved Domestic Violence (OIDV) by refusing to recuse himself in the O'Connnell shooting case.
Sheriff DAVID SHOAR was elected thrice, two times without opposition, because his bagmen, MICHAEL GOLD and former City Manager WILLIAM B. HARRISS, raised $250,000 for his 2004 election campaign from developers. That's the gift that keeps on giving to developers and other corrupters in St. Johns County.
Now MICHAEL GOLD attacks five (5) media outlets for seeking the truth. MICHAEL GOLD mocks the notion that Governor RICHARD SCOTT might do the right thing and take action. GOLD's probably right.
This is the fourth Christmas that Alexis O'Connell has spent without her mother, Michelle O'Connell.
Michelle O'Connell's very suspicious alleged shooting with a deputy's handgun does not look like "suicide." The ethically challenged State's Attorney7s and Medical Examiner look awful -- their sophistry defies the laws of physics. The conflicted non-investigation of the shooting by the deputy's colleagues and friends defies the laws of conflict of interest.
The O'Connell family deserves answers.
The people of St. Johns County -- and the United Sates of America -- deserve the truth. All of it. Now.
Truth is not flowing from the mouths of Sheriff DAVID B. SHOAR, his mouthpieces and minions (including his brother-in-law CHARLES MULLLIGAN, his General Counsel MATTHEW CLINE and his outside counsel JON KANEY, once a respected First Amendment lawyer and now a legal prostitute, whom SHOAR paid with your money at least nearly $10,000 to help SHOAR evade, avoid and escape press questions).
The federal government is empowered to prosecute civil rights violations by local police. The feds recetly indicted some 20 Los Angeles County, California Sheriff's Deputies for cirvil rights vioaltions. The Justice Department has a distinguisedhed record (commencing under my late mentor St. John Barrett) of prosecuting criminal civil rights violations by law enforcement and the KKK, including the killers of civil rights workers in Mississippi.
Thus, the answer is federal, not state law.
We hope and pray that a federal grand jury, sworn to secrecy under Rule 6 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, will subpoena SHERIFF DAVID SHOAR and his henchmen, apparatchiks and hey-boys, including MICHAEL GOLD and JON KANEY.
Questions must be asked about the O'Connell case and obstruction of justice, perjury, civil rights violations, mail fraud, wire fraud, and corrupton.
Will Sheriff DAVID SHOAR, MICHAEL GOLD and JON KANEY invoke their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination?
Will justice be done?
Or will this case, as so many in the hstory of St. Johns County, be "fixed?"
Satrap St. Johns County Sheriff DAVID SHOAR remained silent during nine (9) months of investigations by the Times and Frontline.
Sheriff SHOAR refused to answer questions. One must ask of SHOAR, in the immortal words of William F. Buckley, Jr, "Why does baloney reject the grinder?"
Sunday, December 22, 2013
New Year's Prediction: Developer and Corrupter Power Broker Sherff DAVID B. SHOAR, f/k/a "DAVID HOAR, Will Retire in 2014
Reading today's St Augustine WReckKord article about Sheriff DAVID B. SHOAR's inept response to the New Nork Times' investigation of his mishandling of the Michelle O'Cconnell shooting death leads to an ineluctable conclusion: Sheriff DAVID B. SHOAR will retire in 2014.
Today, a month late, Sheriff DAVID SHOAR inveighed inept pejoratives at the Times and experts.
God forgive this SHERIFF SHOAR.
SHERIFF DAVID SHOAR has not a legal or factual leg to stand on.
SHERIFF DAVID SHOAR is guilty, guilty, guilty.
SHERIFF SHOAR said he should have been at the scene of the September 2, 2010 shooting.
Sorry, SHERIFF SHOAR, you should have recused yourself, immediately, ab initio.
Enough.
Today, a month late, Sheriff DAVID SHOAR inveighed inept pejoratives at the Times and experts.
God forgive this SHERIFF SHOAR.
SHERIFF DAVID SHOAR has not a legal or factual leg to stand on.
SHERIFF DAVID SHOAR is guilty, guilty, guilty.
SHERIFF SHOAR said he should have been at the scene of the September 2, 2010 shooting.
Sorry, SHERIFF SHOAR, you should have recused yourself, immediately, ab initio.
Enough.
Friday, December 20, 2013
Historic African-American Home Threatened With Demolition, Gets Two Month Reprieve
The historic 100-year old home of the James H. Bell famly at 20 Bernard Street got a two month repvrive yesterday at the meeting of the St. Augustine Hhisoric Architecture Review Board.
The Limelight THeater sought a demolition permit to tear down the small structure, long the home of the Bell family, at 20 Bernard Street.
In 1963-64, half the children desegrgating local schools were residents of Bernard Street, whose residents were threatened, fired and firebombed by KKK members and local segregaionists, empowerd by the St. Augustine Reord's then-owners, who supported the KKK, Sheriff Lawrence O. Davis and Police Chief Virgil Stuart and their violent tactics. The Record published the names and addresses of the children and their parents, spurring forseable retaliation, for which the Record never apologized.
An historic marker on the street commemoreates hte courage of those residents under fire.
The Limelight Theater's demolition permit sought to demolish the small old wooden house to use the land for "open space," admitting it was not in danger of falling down. Yesterday, Limelight said it wants the land for parking.
After more than an hour of testimony and discussion, HARB postponed a decision until February 20th, allowing time for the City's building inspector and an engineer for the Limelight Theater to inspect the structure, and for Limelight to attempt to find someone to move the house to another location.
Limelight's HARB hearing Thursday was only one month before the City of St. Augustine's exhibit, "Journey: 450 Years of African-American History" commences at the Visitor Information Center. The exhibit will be free for local residents and students, and is intended to promote healing.
Toward that end, Limelight needs to stop relying on dodgy evidence from construction contractor Mike Davis (not an engineer) and work to save the building at 20 Bernard Street.
So much of our history has been destroyed. No more. The whole world is watching.
The Limelight THeater sought a demolition permit to tear down the small structure, long the home of the Bell family, at 20 Bernard Street.
In 1963-64, half the children desegrgating local schools were residents of Bernard Street, whose residents were threatened, fired and firebombed by KKK members and local segregaionists, empowerd by the St. Augustine Reord's then-owners, who supported the KKK, Sheriff Lawrence O. Davis and Police Chief Virgil Stuart and their violent tactics. The Record published the names and addresses of the children and their parents, spurring forseable retaliation, for which the Record never apologized.
An historic marker on the street commemoreates hte courage of those residents under fire.
The Limelight Theater's demolition permit sought to demolish the small old wooden house to use the land for "open space," admitting it was not in danger of falling down. Yesterday, Limelight said it wants the land for parking.
After more than an hour of testimony and discussion, HARB postponed a decision until February 20th, allowing time for the City's building inspector and an engineer for the Limelight Theater to inspect the structure, and for Limelight to attempt to find someone to move the house to another location.
Limelight's HARB hearing Thursday was only one month before the City of St. Augustine's exhibit, "Journey: 450 Years of African-American History" commences at the Visitor Information Center. The exhibit will be free for local residents and students, and is intended to promote healing.
Toward that end, Limelight needs to stop relying on dodgy evidence from construction contractor Mike Davis (not an engineer) and work to save the building at 20 Bernard Street.
So much of our history has been destroyed. No more. The whole world is watching.
Thursday, December 19, 2013
Drawing a Line in the Sand in St. Augustine Beach-- It Takes A Village to Preserve a Village
Last night, the St. Augustine Beach City Commission's Charter Review Committee agreed to recommend a City Charter amendment to limit building heights to 35 feet.
The "overwhelming consenus," (as facilitator Marilyn Crotty from the University of Central Florida put it), was what one committee member called "the hly grail" among beach residents -- no tall buildings here. St. Augustine Beach residents don't want tall buildings, anywhere, ever!
If approved by the City Commission next year, voters would have the opportunity to decide on this and other Charter Amendments in August or November elections.
My late mentor, Robin Nadeau, would have been proud to see this day.
Putting the 35 foot limit in the City charter preserves "our village," in the words of Henry Dean, a lawyer and former Executive Director of two of Florida's five water management districts (St. Johns River Water Management District and South Florida Water Management District).
Putting the 35 foot limit in the St. Augustine Beach Charter would tell Congress we're serious about protecitng our enviroment here at the local level, which should entice them to consdier seriously the St. Augustine Naional Historical Park and National Seashore legislation, first proposed in 1939 by then-Mayor Walter Fraser of St. Augustine. www.staugustgreen.com
Two board members were absent (St. Augustine Ciy Attorney Ronald Wayne Brown and former SAB Mayor Edward George), replaced by alternates for the key discussion on height limits.
Speaking for himself, SAB Planning and Zonding Board chazir Al Guido supported the height limits, as did I. No other citizens spoke or attended other than SAB employees.
The height limit discussion will be repeated over the next year, in countless ways, as democracy in action at St. Augustine beach, drawing a proverbial "line in the sand" that developers shall not cross.
Height limits are enforceable and constitutional, and preserve the "village" character of several other Florida towns.
The only one of seven charter board members to oppose the height limit last night was former City of St. Augustine Mayor Len Weeks. Mr. Weeks said he supported the 35 foot limit, but stated that he did not want it written in the Charter because he did not want to "tie the hands" of future commissioners in entertaining proposals from developers. He did not elaborate.
Talk about conscious parallelism: Ms. Crotty used the same tiresome trite trope ("Tie the hands") as the committee was appointed and got organized earlier this year. She said charters should not "tie the hands" of elected officials. This is errant nonsense. That's exactly what they're supposed to do!
Thus, I informed SAB City Commissioners and Charter Review Comittee members that that is exactly what charters and constitutions are supposed to do -- limit government. Ms. Crotty works for a UCF government advisory service that isn't always sensitive to public rights to open, accountable governments.
"Tie the hands," indeed. Harrumph!
Board members discussed their concerns about the future, and what future officeholders and staff might do.
As Henry Dean said, "we don't want to be Daytona Beach."
Developers and contractors (of which Weeks is a prominent one here) have a bad reputation in St. Johns County -- lower than whale poop at the bottom of the Sargasso Sea. Developers' uglifying monstrosities have killed thousands of oak and magnolia trees with clearcutting, packed our roads with poorly planned commerercial and residential entrances, and created suburban sprawl.
The real estate bubble and local activists ahve halted them in their tracks.
Preserving and protecting our history, nature and natural beauty here is the number one job of government.
The 35 foot limit will preserve what University of Florida Geography Professor Ari Lamme calls "our sense of place."
At one point, Ms. Crotty said something about not wanting to "reinvent the wheel." I responded later that the U.S. Patent and Trademark website shows there are some 500,000 patents for wheels, that we "reinvent the wheel" all the time, and that our Space Shuttles would not have been able to land without "reinventing wheels."
"Reinventing government" does not benefit from cognitive misers, or from Ms. Crotty's trite tropes like "tying the hands" and "we don't want to reinvent the wheel."
Other matters discussed last night include: (a) allowing city ordinances to be amended or abolished by initiatives and referendums by voters, and (b) requiring city commissioner candidates to run against all commission candidates in an election, rather than for a particular seat (eliminating "free rides" for candidates who draw no opponent).
Timing: St. Johns County Supervisor of Elections Vicky Oakes, an ally of controersial St. Johns County Sheriff David B. Shoar, has attempted to dictate to the St. Augustine Beach City Commission her queer notion that the Charter amendments must be on the August Primary ballot, she claims it is because of an as-yet unknown number of state constitutional amendments. St. Johns County Election Supervisor Vicky Oakes is in no position to dictate timing to municipal elected officials.
Committee members and citizens agree: turnout is too low in primaries -- abysmal -- and primaries concide with prime hurricane season. Better to let everyone vote in November, when we elect Florida's next Governor.
Loopholes: The 35 foot height limit for buildings is currently written in four city ordinances, which make exceptions for an extra five feet of concealed heating, ventilating, air conditioning and other accoutrements at the top of buildnigs, as long as there is an architectural feature concealing them across only part of the building. The Charter language would likely incorporate this exemption for commercial buildings, but not homes.
Bottom line: St. Augustine Beach voers will likely get to vote next year to retain their "village" character, by adopting the 35 foot building height limit in their City Charter --- thereby preserve and protect their environmental heritage for future generatinos, precluding tall beach homes, condos or hotels that smear, blear and tear so much of Florida's coastline.
Three cheers for the Charter Review Committee of St. Augustine Beach!
Viewing St. Johns County from Google Earth, one sees very few tall buildings anywhere along our coast. From the Volusia County line to the Duval County line (Jacksonville), Flagler and St. Johns County's coastlines are relatively unscathed. Our Matanzas River is one of the purest in the state, and was recently blessed with a new Riverkeeper organization, headed by Neil Armingeon, who was the first St. Johns River Waterkeeper.
Next steps: I predict a 35 foot limit will eventually be the rule, by charter, countywide.
In 2008, egged on by some Ponte Vedra residents, our St. Johns County Commissioners proposed a half-baked "starter charter" that would have made the 35 foot limit countywide.
Voters disapproved of the charter, but not the height limit (which required passage of the charter to become effective).
The "starter charter" did not amount to a charter of limited government, did not include an Inspector General or Ombuds, did not do anything to hold the Sheriff, Election Supervisor and other constitutional officers accountable (leaving them out), required petition signatures of 20% of voters to amend it, and, incredibly, insulted GLBT people by leaving us out of section 10.06, a putative "nondiscrimination" provision.
I helped kill that charter, and I would do it again. However, I would support a charter that is consisent with the vision of James Madison and our Founding Fathers. Charters, like constitutions, are supposed to "tie the hands" of government officials. (Sorry, Ms. Crotty, but you can look it up!)
The "overwhelming consenus," (as facilitator Marilyn Crotty from the University of Central Florida put it), was what one committee member called "the hly grail" among beach residents -- no tall buildings here. St. Augustine Beach residents don't want tall buildings, anywhere, ever!
If approved by the City Commission next year, voters would have the opportunity to decide on this and other Charter Amendments in August or November elections.
My late mentor, Robin Nadeau, would have been proud to see this day.
Putting the 35 foot limit in the City charter preserves "our village," in the words of Henry Dean, a lawyer and former Executive Director of two of Florida's five water management districts (St. Johns River Water Management District and South Florida Water Management District).
Putting the 35 foot limit in the St. Augustine Beach Charter would tell Congress we're serious about protecitng our enviroment here at the local level, which should entice them to consdier seriously the St. Augustine Naional Historical Park and National Seashore legislation, first proposed in 1939 by then-Mayor Walter Fraser of St. Augustine. www.staugustgreen.com
Two board members were absent (St. Augustine Ciy Attorney Ronald Wayne Brown and former SAB Mayor Edward George), replaced by alternates for the key discussion on height limits.
Speaking for himself, SAB Planning and Zonding Board chazir Al Guido supported the height limits, as did I. No other citizens spoke or attended other than SAB employees.
The height limit discussion will be repeated over the next year, in countless ways, as democracy in action at St. Augustine beach, drawing a proverbial "line in the sand" that developers shall not cross.
Height limits are enforceable and constitutional, and preserve the "village" character of several other Florida towns.
The only one of seven charter board members to oppose the height limit last night was former City of St. Augustine Mayor Len Weeks. Mr. Weeks said he supported the 35 foot limit, but stated that he did not want it written in the Charter because he did not want to "tie the hands" of future commissioners in entertaining proposals from developers. He did not elaborate.
Talk about conscious parallelism: Ms. Crotty used the same tiresome trite trope ("Tie the hands") as the committee was appointed and got organized earlier this year. She said charters should not "tie the hands" of elected officials. This is errant nonsense. That's exactly what they're supposed to do!
Thus, I informed SAB City Commissioners and Charter Review Comittee members that that is exactly what charters and constitutions are supposed to do -- limit government. Ms. Crotty works for a UCF government advisory service that isn't always sensitive to public rights to open, accountable governments.
"Tie the hands," indeed. Harrumph!
Board members discussed their concerns about the future, and what future officeholders and staff might do.
As Henry Dean said, "we don't want to be Daytona Beach."
Developers and contractors (of which Weeks is a prominent one here) have a bad reputation in St. Johns County -- lower than whale poop at the bottom of the Sargasso Sea. Developers' uglifying monstrosities have killed thousands of oak and magnolia trees with clearcutting, packed our roads with poorly planned commerercial and residential entrances, and created suburban sprawl.
The real estate bubble and local activists ahve halted them in their tracks.
Preserving and protecting our history, nature and natural beauty here is the number one job of government.
The 35 foot limit will preserve what University of Florida Geography Professor Ari Lamme calls "our sense of place."
At one point, Ms. Crotty said something about not wanting to "reinvent the wheel." I responded later that the U.S. Patent and Trademark website shows there are some 500,000 patents for wheels, that we "reinvent the wheel" all the time, and that our Space Shuttles would not have been able to land without "reinventing wheels."
"Reinventing government" does not benefit from cognitive misers, or from Ms. Crotty's trite tropes like "tying the hands" and "we don't want to reinvent the wheel."
Other matters discussed last night include: (a) allowing city ordinances to be amended or abolished by initiatives and referendums by voters, and (b) requiring city commissioner candidates to run against all commission candidates in an election, rather than for a particular seat (eliminating "free rides" for candidates who draw no opponent).
Timing: St. Johns County Supervisor of Elections Vicky Oakes, an ally of controersial St. Johns County Sheriff David B. Shoar, has attempted to dictate to the St. Augustine Beach City Commission her queer notion that the Charter amendments must be on the August Primary ballot, she claims it is because of an as-yet unknown number of state constitutional amendments. St. Johns County Election Supervisor Vicky Oakes is in no position to dictate timing to municipal elected officials.
Committee members and citizens agree: turnout is too low in primaries -- abysmal -- and primaries concide with prime hurricane season. Better to let everyone vote in November, when we elect Florida's next Governor.
Loopholes: The 35 foot height limit for buildings is currently written in four city ordinances, which make exceptions for an extra five feet of concealed heating, ventilating, air conditioning and other accoutrements at the top of buildnigs, as long as there is an architectural feature concealing them across only part of the building. The Charter language would likely incorporate this exemption for commercial buildings, but not homes.
Bottom line: St. Augustine Beach voers will likely get to vote next year to retain their "village" character, by adopting the 35 foot building height limit in their City Charter --- thereby preserve and protect their environmental heritage for future generatinos, precluding tall beach homes, condos or hotels that smear, blear and tear so much of Florida's coastline.
Three cheers for the Charter Review Committee of St. Augustine Beach!
Viewing St. Johns County from Google Earth, one sees very few tall buildings anywhere along our coast. From the Volusia County line to the Duval County line (Jacksonville), Flagler and St. Johns County's coastlines are relatively unscathed. Our Matanzas River is one of the purest in the state, and was recently blessed with a new Riverkeeper organization, headed by Neil Armingeon, who was the first St. Johns River Waterkeeper.
Next steps: I predict a 35 foot limit will eventually be the rule, by charter, countywide.
In 2008, egged on by some Ponte Vedra residents, our St. Johns County Commissioners proposed a half-baked "starter charter" that would have made the 35 foot limit countywide.
Voters disapproved of the charter, but not the height limit (which required passage of the charter to become effective).
The "starter charter" did not amount to a charter of limited government, did not include an Inspector General or Ombuds, did not do anything to hold the Sheriff, Election Supervisor and other constitutional officers accountable (leaving them out), required petition signatures of 20% of voters to amend it, and, incredibly, insulted GLBT people by leaving us out of section 10.06, a putative "nondiscrimination" provision.
I helped kill that charter, and I would do it again. However, I would support a charter that is consisent with the vision of James Madison and our Founding Fathers. Charters, like constitutions, are supposed to "tie the hands" of government officials. (Sorry, Ms. Crotty, but you can look it up!)
Thursday, December 12, 2013
FDLE does appear to have made one mistake about the Michelle O"Connell shooting case
The FDLE's investigation of the death of Michelle O'Connell has at least one major flaw: the timeline.
FDLE incorrectly assumed that the September 2, 2013 3-band Paramore concert at the St. Augustine Amphieatre must have ended at 10 PM, based upon witnesses describing the curfew at the Amphitheatre.
However, Mr. Ryan Murphy, St. Augustne Amphitheater Manager, has confirmed to me in writing that this particular concert, one where the gates opened at 5:30, ended sometime between 9:30 and 9:50.
Thus, there was an additional ten (10) minutes and up to as much as an additional thirty (30) minutes, within which the events of Septembber 2, 2010 transpired at 4700 Sherlock Place in rural-surburban sprawl southern St. Johns County.
St. Augustine Amphitheater concerts may end after 10 PM with permission by the City Manager and County Administrator, as where then there are weather delays, no problem with decibel levels, and few or no complaints from neighbors. They may also end earlier when theu begin early, as with the September 2, 2010 Paramore concert, where the gates opened at 5:30.
Federal investigators will find a list of local law enforcement officers worked off-duty at the Paramore conert to provide security: their recollections as to when th3 concert ended will back up the Amphitheater Manager's. recollections So will Amphitheater pay and receipt records.
Of course, St. Johns County Sheriff DAVID SHOAR's 153-page flyspecking nitpicking of the FDLE report missed this error about the timeline.
It appears that Sheriff DAVID B. SHOAR was not searching for truth -- he was grasping at straws in response to the New York Times records request.
Hence, SHERIFF SHOAR left out one verifiably valid criticism of the FDLE investigation -- the timeline.
Wonder why?
Sheriff DAVID SHOAR is a graduate of two FBI academies. His department is accredited by the Council on Accreditation of Law Enforcement Agents, Inc. (CALEA).
Sheriff SHOAR's self-investigation stinks.
FDLE incorrectly assumed that the September 2, 2013 3-band Paramore concert at the St. Augustine Amphieatre must have ended at 10 PM, based upon witnesses describing the curfew at the Amphitheatre.
However, Mr. Ryan Murphy, St. Augustne Amphitheater Manager, has confirmed to me in writing that this particular concert, one where the gates opened at 5:30, ended sometime between 9:30 and 9:50.
Thus, there was an additional ten (10) minutes and up to as much as an additional thirty (30) minutes, within which the events of Septembber 2, 2010 transpired at 4700 Sherlock Place in rural-surburban sprawl southern St. Johns County.
St. Augustine Amphitheater concerts may end after 10 PM with permission by the City Manager and County Administrator, as where then there are weather delays, no problem with decibel levels, and few or no complaints from neighbors. They may also end earlier when theu begin early, as with the September 2, 2010 Paramore concert, where the gates opened at 5:30.
Federal investigators will find a list of local law enforcement officers worked off-duty at the Paramore conert to provide security: their recollections as to when th3 concert ended will back up the Amphitheater Manager's. recollections So will Amphitheater pay and receipt records.
Of course, St. Johns County Sheriff DAVID SHOAR's 153-page flyspecking nitpicking of the FDLE report missed this error about the timeline.
It appears that Sheriff DAVID B. SHOAR was not searching for truth -- he was grasping at straws in response to the New York Times records request.
Hence, SHERIFF SHOAR left out one verifiably valid criticism of the FDLE investigation -- the timeline.
Wonder why?
Sheriff DAVID SHOAR is a graduate of two FBI academies. His department is accredited by the Council on Accreditation of Law Enforcement Agents, Inc. (CALEA).
Sheriff SHOAR's self-investigation stinks.
SOMETHING MISSING?
Apparently the faux Fox News propaganda site HISTORIC CITY NEWS has now deleted a December 2, 2013 editorial about former St. Augustine Record Edior Peter Ellis still having questions for Sheriff DAVID B. SHOAR.
It is still listed on Google but has been deleted -- "Error 404." It is described on Google as "Editorial: Ellis still has questions for Shoar."
It's gone now. Wonder why?
It's also apparently been deleted from Topix. Why?
It is still listed on Google but has been deleted -- "Error 404." It is described on Google as "Editorial: Ellis still has questions for Shoar."
It's gone now. Wonder why?
It's also apparently been deleted from Topix. Why?
We Need New Interlocal Agreements to Rein In Law Enforcement Abuses of Power
The interlocal agreement fo mutual aid and assistance between the City of St. Augustine and the St. Johns County Sheriff expired some eleven months ago.
We need a new interlocal agreement to rein in abuse of power by Sheriff DAVID B. SHOAR.
We also need one with the Medical Examiner.
We also need one with the State's Attorney.
Justice for Michelle O'Connell.
No more blank checks for Caudillos.
No more $225,000 annual paycheck for an insouciant medical examiner who uses scotch tape to manufacture evidence -- using physics-defying sophistry about guns movign forward after they fire -- embarrassing the good people of St. Johns County and disrespecting the O'Connell family on national television. Dr. PREDRAG BULIC, M.D. should be fired for gross incompetence.
No more mutual aid and assistance to the Sheriff without boundaries -- ethics, recusal, collection, preservation and analysis of evidence. There's too much at stake. St. Augustine and St. Augustine Beach could be held liable for anything wrong that they do in conjunction with SJCSO in a mutual aid and assistance situation.
We have a right to insist that SJCSO comply with ethical norms before putting SAPD and SABPD officers in harm's way with SJCSO.
No more coverups.
No more lies.
No more secrecy.
The whole world is watching.
What do you reckon?
We need a new interlocal agreement to rein in abuse of power by Sheriff DAVID B. SHOAR.
We also need one with the Medical Examiner.
We also need one with the State's Attorney.
Justice for Michelle O'Connell.
No more blank checks for Caudillos.
No more $225,000 annual paycheck for an insouciant medical examiner who uses scotch tape to manufacture evidence -- using physics-defying sophistry about guns movign forward after they fire -- embarrassing the good people of St. Johns County and disrespecting the O'Connell family on national television. Dr. PREDRAG BULIC, M.D. should be fired for gross incompetence.
No more mutual aid and assistance to the Sheriff without boundaries -- ethics, recusal, collection, preservation and analysis of evidence. There's too much at stake. St. Augustine and St. Augustine Beach could be held liable for anything wrong that they do in conjunction with SJCSO in a mutual aid and assistance situation.
We have a right to insist that SJCSO comply with ethical norms before putting SAPD and SABPD officers in harm's way with SJCSO.
No more coverups.
No more lies.
No more secrecy.
The whole world is watching.
What do you reckon?
Times-Union editorial nearly hits the mark on Sheriff DAVID B. SHOAR
Article IV, Section 7, of our Florida Constitution states:
SECTION 7. Suspensions; filling office during suspensions.—(a) By executive order stating the grounds and filed with the custodian of state records, the governor may suspend from office any state officer not subject to impeachment, any officer of the militia not in the active service of the United States, or any county officer, for malfeasance, misfeasance, neglect of duty, drunkenness, incompetence, permanent inability to perform official duties, or commission of a felony, and may fill the office by appointment for the period of suspension. The suspended officer may at any time before removal be reinstated by the governor.
(b) The senate may, in proceedings prescribed by law, remove from office or reinstate the suspended official and for such purpose the senate may be convened in special session by its president or by a majority of its membership.
(c) By order of the governor any elected municipal officer indicted for crime may be suspended from office until acquitted and the office filled by appointment for the period of suspension, not to extend beyond the term, unless these powers are vested elsewhere by law or the municipal charter.
In 1970, Florida Governor Claude Kirk, Jr. removed corrupt St. Johns County Sheriff LAWRENCE O. DAVIS, and the Florida Senate upheld the removal by vote of 44-2. They did so despite a St. Johns County jury's seven mnute deliberations before finding DAVIS "not guilty." St. Johns County Sheriff DAVID SHOAR's website actually claims the State Senate "exonerated" DAVIS. More lies. Those same lies -- and false statements that Sheriff LAWRENCE DAVIS somehow "held the town together" in 1964 and that Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was arrested here by "federal agents" were on Sheriff DAVID SHOAR's website on August 28, 2013 the fiftieth anniversary of Dr. King's "I have a dream speech." Sheriff DAVID SHOAR's brother-in-law, Commander Charles Mulligan (his press spokesman, natch), wrote me that the SJCSO's "by federal agents" lie was a "typo!" He would not explain. The "federal agents" lie has since been removed. The rest of the sickening paen to DAVIS remains. The paen to DAVS is word-for-word from what former Sheriff NEIL PERRY distributed in an amateurish non-book prepared in 1995. Quick review -- three Sheriff SHOAR website lies about Sheriff DAVIS: One: DAVIS was a crook, he was removed by the Governor, and his removal was upheld by the Florida Senate, which fired him by vote of 44-2. Two: Sheriff DAVIS did not "hold the town together," he was a KKK member and sympathizer who violated civil rights. Three: Dr. King was never arrested anywhere by "federal agents."
Like Governor Claude Kirk before him, who rightly removed corrupt Sheriff LAWRENCE O. DAVIS, Florida Governor RICHARD SCOTT has those same constitutional powers to suspend Sherff DAVID B. SHOAR for misconduct in office, pending invstigation. See Article IV, Section 7, above. Governor SCOTT should use it as a result of the unrebutted New York Times and PBS Frontline revelations about SHOAR's misconduct in office in connection with the Michelle O'Connell shooting case. The Governor could sign a document complying with Article IV, Section 7 of the Florida Constitution, suspending SHOAR for malfeasance, misfeasance, neglect of duty," and "incompetence."
No one among us disagrees: St. Johns County Sheriff DAVID SHOAR should have recused himself on September 2, 2010 when deputies were called to the home of a fellow deputy, whose girlfriend was shot with the deputy's own SJCSO weapon.
Every single thing that happened after that bad decision is the sequelae of bad judgment. The police chiefs of St. Augustine and St. Augustine Beach would both have recused themselves. So would anyone else with any sense of ethics. Or any heart, soul or brains at all.
For the record: Sheriff DAVID SHOAR worked his way college, earning three degrees. He has an M.A. in Public Administration, graduated from two FBI academies, and has a Public Administration award at Flagler College named after him. He's well read. He's not stupid -- smug Sheriff DAVID SHOAR is ethically challenged, like disgraced President RICHARD MILHOUS NIXON. Like NIXON, SHOAR thinks we're stupid. He's wrong.
So, instead of recusing himself, Sheriff SHOAR has embarassed St. Johns County residents in the eyes of the entire world.
To say that Sheriff SHOAR's corruption is bad for tourism is hardly necessary -- it is bad for everyone living in St. Johns County. Do you in the County feel safe knowing such unethical behavior exists?
Sherff DAVID SHOAR aggressively embroiled his own career and his entire department n a full-throated defense of one of his deputies, obstructing justice, attacking FDLE, libelling witnesses, firing truth-tellers, coercing, restraining and chilling First Amendment protected activity, threatening journalists, and generally showing himself to be a narcissistic noisome public nuisance.
Sheriff SHOAR is a stench in the nostrils of our Nation.
As seen in the PBS Frontline story's conclusion, Sheriff SHOAR actually asked deputies to give a standing ovation to the deputy in quo -- and had himself videotaped doing so. "Let's give these two guys a hand," indeed!
This DAVID B. SHOAR "selfie" is rank and fetid. It ranks among the rank and fetid down there with RICHARD MILHOUS NIXON's own self-tape recorded White House depravities, which Nixon's disgraced Attorney General JOHN NEWTON MITCHELL (a convicted felon) rightly called "White House horrors."
So, what is to be done? What do we do about Sheriff's Department "horrors?"
First, we must ask Sheriff SHOAR, in the words of lawyer Joseph Welch during the Army-McCarthy hearings, "At long last sir, have you no sense of decency?" Will he resign? I doubt it.
Second, the Justice Department needs to subpoena SHOAR before a Federal Grand Jury.
The FBI and Justice Department have the power to investigate criminal civil rights violations, as they have done in the Los Angeles County, California Sheriff's Department, indicting officers for obstruction of justice and brutality.
The FBI and Justice Department have the power to investigate materially false statements to law enforcement, as they did in the case of Martha Stewart. Sheriff SHOAR sent his materially false and misleading attacks on witnesses and FDLE to the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department, with the intention of causing harm to FDLE agents for doing their job.
The FBI and Justice Department must get to work.
False statements to federal officials are serious felonies. So are civil rights voilations under color of state law. So is obstruction of justice.
The Florida Times-Union editorial (reprinted below), "Too many questions remain in death of deputy's girlfried (sic)," complete with headline typo, nearly hits the mark.
"Too many questions....?" That's an understatement. An investigation and inquest are both required. But that's not all, folks. Federal investigation is mandatory.
Further state investigations could be a snare and a delusion -- Sheriff SHOAR has requested one of the FDLE agents, remember, T-U?
So we're expecting what from the State now, T-U?
T-U to the contrry, I seriously doubt that anything will ever be done about SHERIFF SHOAR by our disreputable "Fifth Amendment" Florida Governor RICHARD SCOTT.
Again, SCOTT has appointed to the Florida Criminal Justice Standards and Training Commission BOTH DAVID B. SHOR AND SHOAR's mendacious mentor, tatterdemalion former St. Augustine Ciy Manager WILLIAM B. HARRISS (supposedly the only citizen representative out of nineteen members, he actually works for SJCSCO).
I do so hope I'm wrong about SCOTT's response on Sheriff SHOAR. But I would not heavily mortgage my time looking for Governor RICHARD SCOTT to do much of anything about SHOAR -- he is "all hat and no cattle."
Our corrupt Sunshine state government's longstanding one-party misrule (first by segregationist Democrats, now by corporativist Republicans) after all these yearsssis still centered on electoral gerrymandering, voter suppression, and developer cash. Florida is still run by narcissistic super-sized egos (like the maladroit, ethically impaired RICHARD SCOTT, and DAVID SHOAR).
Expecting one other-directed Florida Republican politican to attack another is not unlike expecting rattlesnakes to bite each other -- wouldn't that be a violation of poitical norms and "professional courtesy?"
Two Florida State's Attorneys have been part of the O'Connell case bungling and coverup. Shall we try for a third? Why bother? This is like Mississipi in 1963-64, as popularized in Mississippi Burning (and Ghosts of Mississippi).
To remedy St. Johns County's "Wild West" corruption and vile, retaliatory, sexist, misogynist racist hostile working environment of the St. Johns County Sheriff's Department requires federal action.
Possible federal crimes are at issue.
Federal action was required in 1964 in Mississippi and here, where Sheriff LAWRENCE O. DAVIS (praised on SHOAR's website for his racist actions in 1964, which SHOAR says somehow "held the town together") handed out deputy badges to HOSS MANUCY and other KKK members (and his deputies formed a considerble corps of KKK support here). Courageous United States District Judge BRYAN SIMPSON ordered deputies fired and KKK members were outed and ousted.
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder must convene a Federal Grand Jury pursuant to Rule 6 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, subpoena witnessese, obtain evidence and find and publish the truth about the St. JOHNS COUNTY SHERIFF.
Expect sweeping indictments.
Let justice be done.
SECTION 7. Suspensions; filling office during suspensions.—(a) By executive order stating the grounds and filed with the custodian of state records, the governor may suspend from office any state officer not subject to impeachment, any officer of the militia not in the active service of the United States, or any county officer, for malfeasance, misfeasance, neglect of duty, drunkenness, incompetence, permanent inability to perform official duties, or commission of a felony, and may fill the office by appointment for the period of suspension. The suspended officer may at any time before removal be reinstated by the governor.
(b) The senate may, in proceedings prescribed by law, remove from office or reinstate the suspended official and for such purpose the senate may be convened in special session by its president or by a majority of its membership.
(c) By order of the governor any elected municipal officer indicted for crime may be suspended from office until acquitted and the office filled by appointment for the period of suspension, not to extend beyond the term, unless these powers are vested elsewhere by law or the municipal charter.
In 1970, Florida Governor Claude Kirk, Jr. removed corrupt St. Johns County Sheriff LAWRENCE O. DAVIS, and the Florida Senate upheld the removal by vote of 44-2. They did so despite a St. Johns County jury's seven mnute deliberations before finding DAVIS "not guilty." St. Johns County Sheriff DAVID SHOAR's website actually claims the State Senate "exonerated" DAVIS. More lies. Those same lies -- and false statements that Sheriff LAWRENCE DAVIS somehow "held the town together" in 1964 and that Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was arrested here by "federal agents" were on Sheriff DAVID SHOAR's website on August 28, 2013 the fiftieth anniversary of Dr. King's "I have a dream speech." Sheriff DAVID SHOAR's brother-in-law, Commander Charles Mulligan (his press spokesman, natch), wrote me that the SJCSO's "by federal agents" lie was a "typo!" He would not explain. The "federal agents" lie has since been removed. The rest of the sickening paen to DAVIS remains. The paen to DAVS is word-for-word from what former Sheriff NEIL PERRY distributed in an amateurish non-book prepared in 1995. Quick review -- three Sheriff SHOAR website lies about Sheriff DAVIS: One: DAVIS was a crook, he was removed by the Governor, and his removal was upheld by the Florida Senate, which fired him by vote of 44-2. Two: Sheriff DAVIS did not "hold the town together," he was a KKK member and sympathizer who violated civil rights. Three: Dr. King was never arrested anywhere by "federal agents."
Like Governor Claude Kirk before him, who rightly removed corrupt Sheriff LAWRENCE O. DAVIS, Florida Governor RICHARD SCOTT has those same constitutional powers to suspend Sherff DAVID B. SHOAR for misconduct in office, pending invstigation. See Article IV, Section 7, above. Governor SCOTT should use it as a result of the unrebutted New York Times and PBS Frontline revelations about SHOAR's misconduct in office in connection with the Michelle O'Connell shooting case. The Governor could sign a document complying with Article IV, Section 7 of the Florida Constitution, suspending SHOAR for malfeasance, misfeasance, neglect of duty," and "incompetence."
No one among us disagrees: St. Johns County Sheriff DAVID SHOAR should have recused himself on September 2, 2010 when deputies were called to the home of a fellow deputy, whose girlfriend was shot with the deputy's own SJCSO weapon.
Every single thing that happened after that bad decision is the sequelae of bad judgment. The police chiefs of St. Augustine and St. Augustine Beach would both have recused themselves. So would anyone else with any sense of ethics. Or any heart, soul or brains at all.
For the record: Sheriff DAVID SHOAR worked his way college, earning three degrees. He has an M.A. in Public Administration, graduated from two FBI academies, and has a Public Administration award at Flagler College named after him. He's well read. He's not stupid -- smug Sheriff DAVID SHOAR is ethically challenged, like disgraced President RICHARD MILHOUS NIXON. Like NIXON, SHOAR thinks we're stupid. He's wrong.
So, instead of recusing himself, Sheriff SHOAR has embarassed St. Johns County residents in the eyes of the entire world.
To say that Sheriff SHOAR's corruption is bad for tourism is hardly necessary -- it is bad for everyone living in St. Johns County. Do you in the County feel safe knowing such unethical behavior exists?
Sherff DAVID SHOAR aggressively embroiled his own career and his entire department n a full-throated defense of one of his deputies, obstructing justice, attacking FDLE, libelling witnesses, firing truth-tellers, coercing, restraining and chilling First Amendment protected activity, threatening journalists, and generally showing himself to be a narcissistic noisome public nuisance.
Sheriff SHOAR is a stench in the nostrils of our Nation.
As seen in the PBS Frontline story's conclusion, Sheriff SHOAR actually asked deputies to give a standing ovation to the deputy in quo -- and had himself videotaped doing so. "Let's give these two guys a hand," indeed!
This DAVID B. SHOAR "selfie" is rank and fetid. It ranks among the rank and fetid down there with RICHARD MILHOUS NIXON's own self-tape recorded White House depravities, which Nixon's disgraced Attorney General JOHN NEWTON MITCHELL (a convicted felon) rightly called "White House horrors."
So, what is to be done? What do we do about Sheriff's Department "horrors?"
First, we must ask Sheriff SHOAR, in the words of lawyer Joseph Welch during the Army-McCarthy hearings, "At long last sir, have you no sense of decency?" Will he resign? I doubt it.
Second, the Justice Department needs to subpoena SHOAR before a Federal Grand Jury.
The FBI and Justice Department have the power to investigate criminal civil rights violations, as they have done in the Los Angeles County, California Sheriff's Department, indicting officers for obstruction of justice and brutality.
The FBI and Justice Department have the power to investigate materially false statements to law enforcement, as they did in the case of Martha Stewart. Sheriff SHOAR sent his materially false and misleading attacks on witnesses and FDLE to the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department, with the intention of causing harm to FDLE agents for doing their job.
The FBI and Justice Department must get to work.
False statements to federal officials are serious felonies. So are civil rights voilations under color of state law. So is obstruction of justice.
The Florida Times-Union editorial (reprinted below), "Too many questions remain in death of deputy's girlfried (sic)," complete with headline typo, nearly hits the mark.
"Too many questions....?" That's an understatement. An investigation and inquest are both required. But that's not all, folks. Federal investigation is mandatory.
Further state investigations could be a snare and a delusion -- Sheriff SHOAR has requested one of the FDLE agents, remember, T-U?
So we're expecting what from the State now, T-U?
T-U to the contrry, I seriously doubt that anything will ever be done about SHERIFF SHOAR by our disreputable "Fifth Amendment" Florida Governor RICHARD SCOTT.
Again, SCOTT has appointed to the Florida Criminal Justice Standards and Training Commission BOTH DAVID B. SHOR AND SHOAR's mendacious mentor, tatterdemalion former St. Augustine Ciy Manager WILLIAM B. HARRISS (supposedly the only citizen representative out of nineteen members, he actually works for SJCSCO).
I do so hope I'm wrong about SCOTT's response on Sheriff SHOAR. But I would not heavily mortgage my time looking for Governor RICHARD SCOTT to do much of anything about SHOAR -- he is "all hat and no cattle."
Our corrupt Sunshine state government's longstanding one-party misrule (first by segregationist Democrats, now by corporativist Republicans) after all these yearsssis still centered on electoral gerrymandering, voter suppression, and developer cash. Florida is still run by narcissistic super-sized egos (like the maladroit, ethically impaired RICHARD SCOTT, and DAVID SHOAR).
Expecting one other-directed Florida Republican politican to attack another is not unlike expecting rattlesnakes to bite each other -- wouldn't that be a violation of poitical norms and "professional courtesy?"
Two Florida State's Attorneys have been part of the O'Connell case bungling and coverup. Shall we try for a third? Why bother? This is like Mississipi in 1963-64, as popularized in Mississippi Burning (and Ghosts of Mississippi).
To remedy St. Johns County's "Wild West" corruption and vile, retaliatory, sexist, misogynist racist hostile working environment of the St. Johns County Sheriff's Department requires federal action.
Possible federal crimes are at issue.
Federal action was required in 1964 in Mississippi and here, where Sheriff LAWRENCE O. DAVIS (praised on SHOAR's website for his racist actions in 1964, which SHOAR says somehow "held the town together") handed out deputy badges to HOSS MANUCY and other KKK members (and his deputies formed a considerble corps of KKK support here). Courageous United States District Judge BRYAN SIMPSON ordered deputies fired and KKK members were outed and ousted.
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder must convene a Federal Grand Jury pursuant to Rule 6 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, subpoena witnessese, obtain evidence and find and publish the truth about the St. JOHNS COUNTY SHERIFF.
Expect sweeping indictments.
Let justice be done.
Florida Times-Union (Jacksonville) Editorial: Too many questions remain in death of deputy's girlfried (sic)
Too many questions remain in death of deputy's girlfried
Posted: December 10, 2013 - 3:35pm
JView this story on the All-Access Members siteThe mishandled investigation into the shooting death of a deputy’s girlfriend has thrust the St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office into the national spotlight.
Whether the death of Michelle O’Connell was a suicide or a homicide has been in dispute since Sept. 2, 2010, when Deputy Jeremy Banks called 911 and said the 24-year-old woman shot herself in his home.
What is hardly disputed is that the investigation had major flaws.
CHANGED OPINIONS TWICE
O’Connell was shot in the mouth with Banks’ .45-cal. pistol during what he described as a breakup and her packing to move out.
Following an autopsy, the medical examiner at first ruled the death a suicide, but after he was shown additional evidence, he later signed an amended death certificate calling it homicide.
Still later, he called it suicide again.
The case is rife with contradictions, accusations of police covering for their own, inter-agency rancor and lawsuits against investigators.
It was recently the subject of a lengthy front-page story in The New York Times and a Frontline PBS documentary.
The commendable journalism by the Times laid bare a host of contradictions and troubling questions about the process of the investigation.
CONFLICT OF INTEREST
Central to the narrative is St. Johns County Sheriff David B. Shoar, who after learning about inquiries by the Times ordered a 152-page review of his office’s actions that attempted to counter theories and evidence undermining a finding of suicide. Shoar declined to be interviewed by the Times or Frontline.
The most egregious mistake in the handling of the case was Shoar’s failure to immediately ask an outside agency to investigate the death of a deputy’s girlfriend, who witnesses said had complained about being abused by Banks.
The Times report also focused on the matter of domestic abuse involving police officers, how it is addressed by law enforcement agencies and why some departments, including Shoar’s, fail to follow suggested guidelines for dealing with abuse.
O’Connell family members refused to believe it was a suicide, especially a sister, Christine O’Connell, to whom Michelle had sent a text shortly before her death saying she was leaving Banks and would soon be on her way to pick up her 4-year-old daughter.
SLOW TO CONTACT FDLE
Under pressure from the family and others, Shoar asked the Florida Department of Law Enforcement in January 2011 to conduct an independent review of O’Connell’s death.
Within days, FDLE turned up two witnesses who separately said they were smoking cigarettes in a nearby home’s garage on Sept. 2 when they heard two people yelling, then a woman screaming “help,” followed by a gun shot, then “help” again, followed by another gun shot. Each passed a polygraph test.
Tests on evidence from the scene revealed Banks’ DNA was not on his weapon, which he had carried on his last shift. O’Connell’s DNA was on the weapon, but there was no trace of hers on two pill bottles in her purse, which belonged to Banks. The pills were in her pocket.
Conflicting theories focused on a cut above O’Connell’s right eye, which the medical examiner, Frederick Hobin, said was caused by an ejected shell casing.
ABSURD THEORY
A new medical examiner, Predrag Bulic, concluded a tactical light under the barrel of the gun had caused that injury.
For that to happen, O’Connell would have had to hold the weapon upside down when she put it in her mouth and fired, and the tactical light would have had to move forward when the gun recoiled. Forensic experts said Bulic’s conclusion was contrary to the laws of physics.
Jerry Findley, a crime scene reconstructionist consulted by FDLE, concluded the injury was caused by the sight at the end of the barrel, likely before the gun was shot. The location of spent shells and other circumstances led him to conclude the gun was fired by a person using the left hand. O’Connell was right-handed; Banks is left-handed.
Findley concluded the evidence was not consistent with suicide but was consistent with homicide.
Dominic Pape, the head of FDLE’s Jacksonville office, wrote to Brad King, the state attorney assigned to handle the case, asking King for a formal inquest. But King refused and decided there was no basis for filing charges, a decision that Shoar hailed as vindication of his office.
The case goes on. Banks has filed a lawsuit against Rusty Rogers, FDLE’s lead investigator, and Pape, alleging misconduct during FDLE’s investigation.
So much is in dispute amid so many unanswered questions about the case that Gov. Rick Scott should order a comprehensive investigation and a formal inquest into O’Connell’s death.
Unless that is done, Banks and the St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office will remain under a cloud of suspicion, largely because the Sheriff’s Office handled the case badly and failed to call in an outside agency at the outset.
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3789
Pointslilrio 12/10/13 - 05:02 pm 00The governor should order an
The governor should order an investigation into the St Johns County Sheriffs Office. I watched the reporters investigation and the reporter did a better investigation than the St Johns County Sheriffs Office. This case has me believing the deputy killed his girlfriend. From what I have seen the deputy should be arrested and let a jury decide. The Sheriffs Office screwed this investigation up from the time they showed up. Looks like Shore may have some opponents in the next election.
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Pointsjohnctaughtme 12/10/13 - 05:24 pm 00It is a tragedy for all
It is a tragedy for all concerned. Those suspected and accused of a crime deserve a fair trial. They and the victims also deserve a competent, effective investigation of the circumstances.
Somebody in this case has not been well-served. Obviously, the victim has not been, if it was indeed murder. If it wasn't, then Deputy Banks hasn't been, as the taint and suspicions surrounding this case will haunt him for the rest of his life.
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PointsOwnTheNight 12/11/13 - 03:01 pm 00Shoar has always been shaky.
Shoar has always been shaky. Hopefully the citizens of St Johns Co. will realize that he needs to go next election cycle.
Read more at Jacksonville.com: http://jacksonville.com/opinion/premium-opinion/2013-12-10/story/too-many-questions-remain-death-deputys-girlfried#ixzz2nGh0wDBv
Tuesday, December 10, 2013
One Year Ago Tonight
One year ago tonight, St. Augustine City Commission passed 5-0 a Fair Housing ordinance recognizing rights of GLBT people to be free from discrimiantion.
We beat the Ku Klux Klan.
Racist ex-Mayor Shelley would not recognize St. Augustine. Neither would J.B. Stoner.
A siilar ordinance was enacted by St. Augustine Beach earlier his yar, also voting to add an employment non-discrimination oreinance.
Sheriff David Shoar also bans discrimination based on sexual orientation.
First to do so in St. Johns County was our Anastasia Mosquito Control Commissino of St. Johns County.
Speaking of St. Johns County, do you get the impression that our County Administrator and County Commission are shy about proteting human rights, while aggressive in tolerating bigotry? When are they going to ask Sheriff DAVID SHOAR about the FOr Street incident, and the $275,000 in secret settlements reported by the New York Times?
We beat the Ku Klux Klan.
Racist ex-Mayor Shelley would not recognize St. Augustine. Neither would J.B. Stoner.
A siilar ordinance was enacted by St. Augustine Beach earlier his yar, also voting to add an employment non-discrimination oreinance.
Sheriff David Shoar also bans discrimination based on sexual orientation.
First to do so in St. Johns County was our Anastasia Mosquito Control Commissino of St. Johns County.
Speaking of St. Johns County, do you get the impression that our County Administrator and County Commission are shy about proteting human rights, while aggressive in tolerating bigotry? When are they going to ask Sheriff DAVID SHOAR about the FOr Street incident, and the $275,000 in secret settlements reported by the New York Times?
Michael Gold is Wrong Again -- Histrionic HISTORIC CITY NEWS reprints racist JOHN BIRCH SOCIETY PAMPHLET, "Rape of the Ancient City," Repeating Falsehoods About St. Augustine's 1964 Civil Rights Heroes and Sheroes
MICHAEL GOLD (f/k/a "MICHAEL TOBIN") raised $250,000 in campaign contributions for Sheriff DAVID B. SHOAR (f/k/a "DAVID B. HOAR") in 2004.
GOLD/TOBIN's efforts meant that SHOAR/HOAR was re-elected (coronated) without opposition in 2008 and 2012. He could be Sheriff for Life, like Neil Perry before him.
Sheriff DAVID SHOAR's website contains materially false and misleading statement, to wit, lies, about the Michelle O'Connell case and a paen to Sheriff L.O. DAVIS, removed from office by the Florida Governor and state Senate in 1970 (SHOAR's webste claims L.O. DAVIS "held the town together" and was somehow exonerated by the Florida State Senate. More lies from Sheriff DAVID SHOAR.
Who is MICHAEL GOLD?
Republican PR man, former Sheriff's deputy and private investigator MICHAEL GOLD has run hate websites.
MICHAEL GOLD runs HISTORIC CITY NEWS, an oxymoronic press release for DAVID B. SHOAR and Republicans. In fact, anyone recently typing www.davidsoar.com into an Internet connection will be taken directly to the HISTORIC CITY NEWS website.
Today's online HISTORIC CITY NEWS reprints as "Special to Historic City News" a 50-year-old propagandistic, 10 page racist lying JOHN BRICH SOCIETY leaflet from 1964, in haec verba, attacking Dr. Robert Hayling, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Governor Peabody's mother, and nearly everyone else.
In this topsy turvy calumny, white racists are victims.
KKK terrorists were united with the JOHN BIRCH SOCIETY in fighting desegregation.
This is how MICHAEL GOLD intends to kick off the 2014 celebration of the 1964 Civil Rights Act -- not with healing, not with brotherhood, but with Lashon hara and lies.
Shame on MICHAEL GOLD.
Shame on anyone who treats HISTORIC CITY NEWS as real journalism, including the St. Augustine Record, which recently repeated that canard in a front page article.
Sounds like the segregationists are circling the wagon, not healing but heaping abuse on esteemed civil rights leaders, both local and national.
This is not the first time MICHAEL GOLD and HISTORIC CITY NEWS have lauded the JOHN BIRCH SOCIETY -- last year it praised a JBS speaker at the ST. AUGUSTINE TEA PARTY, one who bragged about JBS halting police civilian review boards under the guise of a "Support Your Local Police" bandwagon, also claiming cred for abolition of the Justice Department's Law Enfocement Assistnace Administration in 1982. LEAA is now known as the Office of Justice Programs.
A police civilian review board would be empowered to investigate Officer Involved Domestic Violence, but the swaggering JBS misogynists don't want that.
Remember William F. Buckley, Jr.? Buckley rejected the JOHN BIRCH SOCIETY crazies, who called President Dwight Eisenhower a "Communist," just as the Tea Party does now with President Barack Obama.
GOLD/TOBIN's efforts meant that SHOAR/HOAR was re-elected (coronated) without opposition in 2008 and 2012. He could be Sheriff for Life, like Neil Perry before him.
Sheriff DAVID SHOAR's website contains materially false and misleading statement, to wit, lies, about the Michelle O'Connell case and a paen to Sheriff L.O. DAVIS, removed from office by the Florida Governor and state Senate in 1970 (SHOAR's webste claims L.O. DAVIS "held the town together" and was somehow exonerated by the Florida State Senate. More lies from Sheriff DAVID SHOAR.
Who is MICHAEL GOLD?
Republican PR man, former Sheriff's deputy and private investigator MICHAEL GOLD has run hate websites.
MICHAEL GOLD runs HISTORIC CITY NEWS, an oxymoronic press release for DAVID B. SHOAR and Republicans. In fact, anyone recently typing www.davidsoar.com into an Internet connection will be taken directly to the HISTORIC CITY NEWS website.
Today's online HISTORIC CITY NEWS reprints as "Special to Historic City News" a 50-year-old propagandistic, 10 page racist lying JOHN BRICH SOCIETY leaflet from 1964, in haec verba, attacking Dr. Robert Hayling, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Governor Peabody's mother, and nearly everyone else.
In this topsy turvy calumny, white racists are victims.
KKK terrorists were united with the JOHN BIRCH SOCIETY in fighting desegregation.
This is how MICHAEL GOLD intends to kick off the 2014 celebration of the 1964 Civil Rights Act -- not with healing, not with brotherhood, but with Lashon hara and lies.
Shame on MICHAEL GOLD.
Shame on anyone who treats HISTORIC CITY NEWS as real journalism, including the St. Augustine Record, which recently repeated that canard in a front page article.
Sounds like the segregationists are circling the wagon, not healing but heaping abuse on esteemed civil rights leaders, both local and national.
This is not the first time MICHAEL GOLD and HISTORIC CITY NEWS have lauded the JOHN BIRCH SOCIETY -- last year it praised a JBS speaker at the ST. AUGUSTINE TEA PARTY, one who bragged about JBS halting police civilian review boards under the guise of a "Support Your Local Police" bandwagon, also claiming cred for abolition of the Justice Department's Law Enfocement Assistnace Administration in 1982. LEAA is now known as the Office of Justice Programs.
A police civilian review board would be empowered to investigate Officer Involved Domestic Violence, but the swaggering JBS misogynists don't want that.
Remember William F. Buckley, Jr.? Buckley rejected the JOHN BIRCH SOCIETY crazies, who called President Dwight Eisenhower a "Communist," just as the Tea Party does now with President Barack Obama.
Sunday, December 08, 2013
Hamilton Nolan is Right
Writing for Gawker, St. Augustine native Hamilton Nolan, formerly with Folio Weekly has made his family (the Hamiltons and the Nolans) proud, and he has made many a heart leap with joy here.
Nolan was responding to the St. Augustine Record's new editor, who moved here a few weeks ago, casting aspersions (and asparagus) at the New York Times for "parachuting into" St. Augustine and not "making friends" with our corrupt Sheriff, DAVID B. SHOAR.
What noisome gooberishness.
Journalist Hamilton Nolan rightly skewered the St. Augustine Record earlier this week, calling it a "crap paper" for its inane response to what he correctly termed the "Pulitzer worthy" New York Times and PBS Frontline investigation.
There, I quoted it -- Hamilton Nolan called the Record a "crap paper" -- I'm not so Puritanical that I won't quote another journalist calling the St. Augustine Record a "crap paper."
As William F. Buckley, Jr. once wrote, "we must cut the crap." The Record must at long last "cut the crap" and start giving us the real deal, real scoops and real news, and stop pussyfooting around like pusillanimous pussyfooters.
"No matter what you say, it's still a newspaper," in the immortal words of Knoxville News Sentinel reporter Jim Dykes once opined of his newspaper (subject of a Newspaper Guild byline strike that predated the one at the Wall Street Journal)
As a newspaper, this 14-year resident, 14-year subscriber expects the Record to start acting like one. Start investigating, and stop perseverating about our "image" -- what you see is the fault of all of us, for not asking mroe questions.
As Edward R. Murrow quoted Shakespeare when discussing the power of Senator Joseph R. McCarthy (R-Wisc.), "The fault ... lies not in our stars, but in ourselves."
The Record needs to report on what it long ignored -- racism and corruption
We're glad to have an actual local newspaper here, now.
The Record was once owned by racists who publishe the addresses of African-American local school children integrating local schools, and the address of Dr. King's temporary residence, resulting in firebombings and shootings.
The Record has much for which to atone. In the words of Gilbert & Sullivan's "Mikado," "I've got a little list."
At long last, the Record needs to "cut the crap" and for once, distinguish itself as a newspaper, not a KKK rag.
The Record needs to show it has learned from the past.
The Record needs to show that, under new managemen, it now knows the difference between journalism and press release publishing, as practiced by erstwhile hate site operator MICHAEL GOLD's (Sheriff DAVID SHOAR's erstwhile $250,000 fundraiser in 2004) "Historic City News," which the Record this mmorning somehow mistook for a journalist.
Here's Hamilon Nolan's critque, in haec verba: http://gawker.com/heres-the-difference-between-a-crappy-local-paper-and-1476699597
In words written by Robert Kennedy in signing a copy of his book to racist segregationist U.S. Senator James O. Eastland, let me advise the Record: "Repent now, there's still time."
Nolan was responding to the St. Augustine Record's new editor, who moved here a few weeks ago, casting aspersions (and asparagus) at the New York Times for "parachuting into" St. Augustine and not "making friends" with our corrupt Sheriff, DAVID B. SHOAR.
What noisome gooberishness.
Journalist Hamilton Nolan rightly skewered the St. Augustine Record earlier this week, calling it a "crap paper" for its inane response to what he correctly termed the "Pulitzer worthy" New York Times and PBS Frontline investigation.
There, I quoted it -- Hamilton Nolan called the Record a "crap paper" -- I'm not so Puritanical that I won't quote another journalist calling the St. Augustine Record a "crap paper."
As William F. Buckley, Jr. once wrote, "we must cut the crap." The Record must at long last "cut the crap" and start giving us the real deal, real scoops and real news, and stop pussyfooting around like pusillanimous pussyfooters.
"No matter what you say, it's still a newspaper," in the immortal words of Knoxville News Sentinel reporter Jim Dykes once opined of his newspaper (subject of a Newspaper Guild byline strike that predated the one at the Wall Street Journal)
As a newspaper, this 14-year resident, 14-year subscriber expects the Record to start acting like one. Start investigating, and stop perseverating about our "image" -- what you see is the fault of all of us, for not asking mroe questions.
As Edward R. Murrow quoted Shakespeare when discussing the power of Senator Joseph R. McCarthy (R-Wisc.), "The fault ... lies not in our stars, but in ourselves."
The Record needs to report on what it long ignored -- racism and corruption
We're glad to have an actual local newspaper here, now.
The Record was once owned by racists who publishe the addresses of African-American local school children integrating local schools, and the address of Dr. King's temporary residence, resulting in firebombings and shootings.
The Record has much for which to atone. In the words of Gilbert & Sullivan's "Mikado," "I've got a little list."
At long last, the Record needs to "cut the crap" and for once, distinguish itself as a newspaper, not a KKK rag.
The Record needs to show it has learned from the past.
The Record needs to show that, under new managemen, it now knows the difference between journalism and press release publishing, as practiced by erstwhile hate site operator MICHAEL GOLD's (Sheriff DAVID SHOAR's erstwhile $250,000 fundraiser in 2004) "Historic City News," which the Record this mmorning somehow mistook for a journalist.
Here's Hamilon Nolan's critque, in haec verba: http://gawker.com/heres-the-difference-between-a-crappy-local-paper-and-1476699597
In words written by Robert Kennedy in signing a copy of his book to racist segregationist U.S. Senator James O. Eastland, let me advise the Record: "Repent now, there's still time."
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