Ruego para la paz y el amor y respeto por todos
Je prie pour la paix, et l’amour et le respect pour tous
Vaya con Dios, mi amigas y amigos
Archive for March, 2007
Would you believe he actually grew up and became this guy?… Sure you can tell cause he still has the same haircut and the same smile… Yep – that is J J – same same same… 
OOPs!
Is this small enough now J J?
…and this is how it began with a cool pop – up in Michigan many moons have past – and so on it goes – strong stock carries on and on…
This is Karl Rove…
Editor’s note: Apologies are usually seen as acts of benevolence. And to forgive, we are told, is divine. But the path to forgiveness can twist and turn, and sometimes an apology that is meant to heal can be the most hurtful act of all.
Virginia man seeks forgiveness, but woman can’t forget memory of rape
He opens wounds from 1984, now she wants justice
February 25, 2007
BY KRISTEN GELINEAU
ASSOCIATED PRESS
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — William Beebe had been haunted by that night for years. He had tried to send the letter before and failed. Just like he had failed to stick with Alcoholics Anonymous. Just like he had failed at so much in life.
This time, he was staying with the 12-step program. But should he take that ninth step? It told him to make amends with those he had hurt, unless doing so would further injure them. Some warned him to leave it alone. But he prayed on it. So, he began to write.
The first shock
“You got a letter,” Mike Seccuro said, tossing an envelope onto his wife Liz’s lap as he climbed into their minivan.
Who lives in Vegas? she wondered of the postmark before her eyes stopped on the sender’s name. She froze. It was a name she hadn’t uttered in 20 years. Her body felt cold, her brain fuzzy. Hands shaking, she opened the envelope.
“Dear Elizabeth,” the letter began. “In 1984 I harmed you.”
She wept.
In 1984 she was Liz Schimpf, a petite 17-year-old from Yonkers, N.Y., just a few weeks into her first year at the University of Virginia. A fellow tending bar at Phi Kappa Psi handed her a green concoction. Exactly what happened next during the early morning of Oct. 5, 1984, remains unclear. This is what she remembers:
The drink made her feel strange and panicky. Beebe, a student she didn’t know, dragged her to his room. He pulled her onto his lap, kissed her neck, her ear. Repulsed, she pulled free and bolted from the room. “HELP ME!” she screamed. Another student tossed her at Beebe, then left. Beebe tore off her clothes and threw her on the bed. She was a virgin. This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen. His weight was crushing her. She fought, clamped her legs shut. He pried them open. The pain was blinding. She couldn’t breathe.
She passed out.
Fear and doubt
In the minivan, Seccuro was crying so hard her frightened daughter began to wail. “I can scarcely begin to understand the degree to which, through your eyes, my behavior has affected you in its wake,” Beebe wrote. “Still, I stand prepared to hear from you about just how, and in what ways you’ve been affected, and to begin to set right the wrong I’ve done.”
Over the next week, she felt afraid and vulnerable. The questions overwhelmed her. She grabbed her BlackBerry.
“How can you live with yourself?” she typed. He e-mailed back the next day. “I always felt tremendous guilt for the ways in which I imagined my conduct had damaged you, and for years too the only solution seemed to be the bottle, which worked less and less over time to assuage the guilt,” he wrote. “It appears I have laid the groundwork for a shattered life, and I simply do not know what to do, save for doing what you ask.”
But Seccuro didn’t know what to do either. And so began a two-month e-mail correspondence. Seccuro told Beebe of the devastating effects of his actions; Beebe detailed the devastating effects of the bottle. After that night in 1984, she reported the attack to university officials and campus police, she said, but felt dismissed and disbelieved. She became a loner. Her grades plummeted. At 22, she entered a tumultuous marriage that quickly unraveled. Part of her felt dead. Panic attacks were frequent.
Gradually, life improved. She married Mike, gave birth to Ava, and found success as an event planner in Greenwich, Conn.
His life, too, had been filled with miseries, he wrote. After that night, he was summoned to the dean’s office and told of possible judicial proceedings. “I was pinned by my failure as a person,” he wrote. “A day or so later I withdrew from UVA, unwilling to step up to the plate.” He entered rehab and moved home. A month later, he was drinking again. Over the next nine years, he wrote, he exhausted his parents, employers and friends. Women dismissed him as a drunken, selfish slob. He arrived at AA in 1993. From the moment he read AA’s eighth step — making a list of those he had harmed — he wanted to contact Seccuro. But his sponsor said that would only hurt her. Years passed. A new AA sponsor advised Beebe to pray and to search for Seccuro. Twice he wrote her, but the addresses were wrong. Eventually, he tried again.
Sharp differences
Seccuro read Beebe’s e-mails with growing unease. Was this apology meant to help her — or him? Her skepticism grew when they broached the topic of that night in 1984. “Were you my only attacker?” she asked. “I clearly have an impression of this being either a gang rape or a spectator sport for the rushees.” But his account was disturbingly different from hers.
“I convinced you after what seemed like hesitation, that staying w/ me in my room upstairs was better than walking all the way back to the suites,” he wrote. “Of course, seeing opportunity to have a good time w/ you overrode any gentlemanly efforts to return you safely back to the dorms. “We started to make out in my room a while,” he continued. “There was no fight and it was all over in short order. When we awoke in the morning it was still chilly out, so I lent you my jean jacket, and you walked home. “There were no other men present. I was the only one.”
There was certainly a fight that night, Seccuro responded angrily. She had awakened wrapped in a bloody sheet, then walked to the emergency room. “I thought after all this time, you realized you had raped me and were apologizing,” she wrote. “I trusted that your apology came from a good and honest place and I see this is not the case.” He had been drunk that night, he said, though not so drunk he couldn’t remember what happened. And she wondered, why was he shying away from using the word “rape”? “I want to make clear that I’m not intentionally minimizing the fact of having raped you,” Beebe responded. “I did.”
A twist in the case
A few days later, she stumbled across a Web site dedicated to victims of rape at the University of Virginia. Minutes later, she left a message with the Charlottesville police. They contacted authorities in Las Vegas. On Jan. 4, 2006, Beebe was arrested. There is no statute of limitations on felonies in Virginia, and with Beebe’s written confession, it appeared to be an open and shut case. But, facing a sentence of life in prison, he denied raping Seccuro. They were headed for trial. Her panic attacks returned. She suffered a miscarriage.
Another shock
On April 17, Beebe was indicted on two felony counts: rape and object sexual penetration. Seven months later, he stood before the judge. “Guilty as charged,” he said. But he was pleading guilty to a lesser charge of aggravated sexual battery. The other charges had been dropped. The prosecutors’ recommended sentence: 2 years in prison. Why had they agreed to a plea? Then a prosecutor dropped the bombshell: Investigators believed Seccuro was gang-raped. She had long suspected it. And prosecutors knew his cooperation could be key in bringing other possible attackers to justice.
And now?
The investigation continues. Beebe’s cooperation with authorities will be a consideration when he is sentenced March 15. He remains free on bond. Some still tell her to accept Beebe’s apology and move on. She has forgiven Beebe for attacking her, and for disrupting her life. She does not forgive those who knew about the events of that night and remained silent. Nor does she forgive the university.
But to Seccuro, forgiveness was never the issue. To her, it’s simple.
The apology was for him. Justice is for her.
_________________________________________________________________________
This man is now in jail and has been sentenced to 18 months and 500 hours community service please watch the video above regarding – some have said he apologised she should have gotten over it – if it were their daughter – could/would they be so quick to let it go? What is being done about UVA and theor lack of character in these situations? They share a responsibility in it…! To me – 18 months was not enough – where are the others who did this terrible act – why are they not in jail too… Did he not make a deal for a lighter sentence to tell who the others were? When are they coming to trial?
For those who comment she was partly responsible because she sould have know young men are all about having sex, etc. – Well why would she have known – she was seventeen? – rape is a crime of violence – that has far less to do with sex then it has to do with dominance and power. Shame on the people who intimate that she was partly responsible – same old good old boys BS – women are not property of men to do what they like. Years ago young men were considered to be ‘sowing their wild oats’ and girls were ‘hos’ – jeez – you think folks would get it – how horrible such an act is!!!…
President Bill Clinton’s Decision Not to Pardon Leonard Peltier Lost His Wife a Key Supporter — and Helped Gain Barack Obama a Friend
By DAVID SCHOETZ
Feb. 22, 2007 — – The sharpest political snipes among the Democratic 2008 presidential hopefuls can be traced beyond media mogul David Geffen to a jailed man named Leonard Peltier.
Peltier, convicted of murder in 1977 for allegedly gunning down a pair of FBI agents in a shootout at South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, was one of the primary reasons cited by Geffen for jumping ship from New York Sen. Hillary Clinton’s campaign in favor of fellow Democratic Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois.
Lawyers have been challenging Peltier’s conviction for the past 30 years. He has become a cause celebre, with critics arguing that the government’s successful prosecution was corrupt.
In 2001, Geffen, a key Democratic supporter with deep pockets and influence among Hollywood’s elite, was one of many high-profile backers of a clemency campaign for Peltier, an American Indian activist, during the final days of Bill Clinton’s presidency.
FBI supporters, however, fought back, launching an aggressive campaign of their own to keep a man who they believed killed two agents behind bars. Among their tactics were full-page newspaper ads and a march on the White House to influence Clinton’s decision.
Ultimately, Peltier was left off a list of 140 people granted presidential pardons by Clinton during his second term.
“President Clinton looked at the facts and did not act,” one agent said at the time. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted out of this.”
But the list of people who received clemency, teamed with the continued belief by many that Peltier was wrongfully convicted, left many angered by Clinton’s decision.
“Up to the last minute, they were fully expecting that he would receive clemency,” Barry Bachrach, Peltier’s attorney, told ABC News. “But you end up seeing people like Marc Rich, a known felon, getting clemency instead.”
“There was a mass outcry,” Bachrach said.
Peltier remains in a Pennsylvania prison. He is scheduled for a parole hearing in December 2008.
Curt Goering, deputy executive director for Amnesty International in the United States, worked on the Peltier clemency campaign and recalls Geffen’s contributions both in terms of time and money.
To him, Peltier’s continued influence on Geffen does not come as a total surprise.”It’s another indicator that his case has achieved such substantial support from people for a long period of time,” Goering said. “The disappointment was so huge,” he said. “People didn’t forget and many even resolved to redouble their efforts.” That was clearly the case in comments made by Geffen in a lightning rod New York Times column Wednesday. ”Marc Rich getting pardoned? An oil-profiteer expatriate who left the country rather than pay taxes or face justice?” Geffen told Times’ columnist Maureen Dowd. And then, referring to the Peltier case, Geffen continued, ”Yet another time when the Clintons were unwilling to stand for the things that they genuinely believe in. “Everybody in politics lies, but they do it with such ease, it’s troubling,” Geffen said.
The column, which ran a day after Geffen hosted a California fundraiser for Obama that fetched $1.3 million and drew celebrities including Jennifer Aniston and Morgan Freeman, set off a day of bitter back-and-forth between the Obama and Clinton camps.
Clinton lashed out first, blasting Obama for being hypocritical.
“He decries the politics of ‘slash and burn,’ and yet his chief supporters in California are engaged in the politics of slash and burn,” said Howard Wolfson, Clinton’s spokesman.
Obama returned serve, saying, “The Clintons had no problem with David Geffen when he was raising them $18 million and sleeping at their invitation in the Lincoln Bedroom.”
The Clinton campaign also erroneously referred to Geffen as Obama’s “finance chair” when he actually has no official role with the campaign.
Geffen, having sparked the maelstrom, offered his own statement, confirming the accuracy of Dowd’s reporting and denying a formal position in the Obama campaign. He also offered his “strongest possible” support for the candidate.
Copyright © 2007 ABC News Internet Ventures
It is well known that Leonard Peltier did NOT kill the FBI agents – when he was convicted the prosecutor stated that they did not know if Leonard Peltier actually killed the agents – but someone had to pay – so they elected Leonard to be the one and spend the past 30 years in prison for something he did NOT do! It has been suggested that he was killed by so-called friendly fire – who knows – Bill Clinton pardoned many men – and was picketed by the FBI – somehow knuckled under forcing Leonard to remain in federal prison. This is my bone of contention with him – in spite of the many good things he has managed to do. Many remember and connect Hillary by association – does this mean that I will vote for Barack Obama – not necessarily – I do not know yet as I don’t know enough about him – I will not make my decision because of gender or ethnicity – I do not vote for people because a celebrity supports them or someone I know that has been a life time member of any political party – it is a responsibility I take very seriously – time will tell – it is after all – a whole damn bloody year and a half for pity sake…
Recently on the View – Elisabeth [the resident conservative republican and realist] stated that she felt that people who make statements as Pace did are trying to take the attention off themselves [pay no attention to the man behing the curtain] and to attempt to cover up what they are guilty of – in other words pay attention – if you are upset over this know that it is to meant to divert our attention from what is really going on – what they are really doing…
By PAULINE JELINEK, Associated Press Writer1 hour, 6 minutes ago
The Pentagon’s top general expressed regret Tuesday that he called homosexuality immoral, a remark that drew a harsh condemnation from members of Congress and gay advocacy groups.
In a newspaper interview Monday, Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had likened homosexual acts to adultery and said the military should not condone it by allowing gays to serve openly in the armed forces.
In a statement Tuesday, he said he should have focused more in the interview on the Defense Department policy about gays — and “less on my personal moral views.”
He did not offer an apology, something that had been demanded by gay rights groups.
“General Pace’s comments are outrageous, insensitive and disrespectful to the 65,000 lesbian and gay troops now serving in our armed forces,” the advocacy group Servicemembers Legal Defense Network said in a statement on its Web site.
The group, which has represented some of the thousands dismissed from the military for their sexual orientation, demanded an apology.
Pace’s senior staff members said earlier that the general was expressing his personal opinion and did not intend to apologize. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not allowed to speak on the record.
Rep. Martin Meehan, who has introduced legislation to repeal the current policy, criticized Pace’s comments.
“General Pace’s statements aren’t in line with either the majority of the public or the military,” said the Massachusetts Democrat. “He needs to recognize that support for overturning (the policy) is strong and growing” and that the military is “turning away good troops to enforce a costly policy of discrimination.”
In an interview Monday with the Chicago Tribune, Pace was asked about the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that allows gays and lesbians to serve if they keep their sexual orientation private and don’t engage in homosexual acts.
Pace said he supports the policy, which became law in 1994 and prohibits commanders from asking about a person’s sexual orientation.
“I believe that homosexual acts between individuals are immoral and that we should not condone immoral acts,” Pace said in the audio recording of the interview posted on the Tribune’s Web site. “I do not believe that the armed forces of the United States are well served by a saying through our policies that it’s OK to be immoral in any way.”
Pace, a native of Brooklyn, N.Y., and a 1967 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, said he based his views on his upbringing.
“As an individual, I would not want (acceptance of gay behavior) to be our policy, just like I would not want it to be our policy that if we were to find out that so-and-so was sleeping with somebody else’s wife, that we would just look the other way, which we do not. We prosecute that kind of immoral behavior,” he said, according to the audio and a transcript released by his staff.
The newspaper said Pace did not address concerns raised by a 2005 government audit that showed some 10,000 troops, including more than 50 specialists in Arabic, have been discharged because of the policy.
Louis Vizcaino, spokesman for the gay rights group Human Rights Campaign, said Pace’s comments were “insulting and offensive to the men and women … who are serving in the military honorably.”
“Right now there are men and women that are in the battle lines, that are in the trenches, they’re serving their country,” Vizcaino said. “Their sexual orientation has nothing to do with their capability to serve in the U.S. military.”
“Don’t ask, don’t tell” was passed by Congress in 1993 after a firestorm of debate in which advocates argued that allowing homosexuals to serve openly would hurt troop morale and recruitment and undermine the cohesion of combat units.
John Shalikashvili, the retired Army general who was Joint Chiefs chairman when the policy was adopted, said in January that he has changed his mind on the issue since meeting with gay servicemen.
“These conversations showed me just how much the military has changed, and that gays and lesbians can be accepted by their peers,” Shalikashvili wrote in a newspaper opinion piece.
[First posted in November 2006]
By Matt Towery
Thursday – 9 November 2006
Amid the debris of the Republicans’ loss of Congress and the secondary political explosion of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s resignation, there is other, perhaps even bigger news.
Not to understate the obvious: As President Bush put it in his Texas vernacular, the Democrats put a “thumpin’” on the GOP in Tuesday’s midterm elections.
But reporters quizzing the president on Wednesday about the election results and about Rumsfeld — Had Bush been untruthful when he said recently that Rumsfeld was going to stay? — seemed to be missing the broader, deeper point at which the president was hinting.
It’s an open secret among political in-the-knows that those closest to former President George H. W. Bush — and perhaps the elder Bush himself — are getting more and more disturbed about Iraq. They weren’t for going there in the first place. Now their urgency has intensified. They believe “staying the course” is a course of destruction for the current President Bush, his Republican Party and the nation. These behind-the-scenes actors can no longer contain their instincts to protect all three.
Recent media reports have brought to light fresh concerns about the White House and Iraq by James Baker, the elder Bush’s top confidante. Baker and former Congressman Lee Hamilton are spearheading a study group tasked with finding realistic, expedited strategies for getting out of Iraq.
It’s painfully clear that whatever recommendations they conjure will be warmly received at the White House. President Bush several times referenced the group’s work at his post-election press conference.
Another telling appointment is that of Bob Gates as the new Secretary of Defense. He’s known in Washington circles as a pragmatist who’s unlikely to be blinded by the idea that current strategy in Iraq is unalterable.
Gates is president of Texas A&M University, where George H. W. Bush’s library is located. Like the former president, Gates once headed up the CIA. So all the evidence points to a “higher power” that has now stuck its substantial nose into the affairs of the U.S. Departments of State and Defense. Look for it to provide not only guidance, but political cover for what’s going to be more than just a tactical adjustment to the U.S. approach in Iraq.
This won’t mean abandoning the region. It can’t. The chaos that would follow in Iraq and in the Middle East would raise a stench that would eventually drift across the ocean and find us. Terrorists would launch new and improved destructive capabilities if left in possession of the desert field.
What it will likely mean is a redrawing of strategy to concentrate on forcing the reluctant Iraqi government to govern, and on curtailing our involvement enough to signal Iraqis and Americans that our presence there isn’t open-ended.
Did President Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and others have blinders on when shown the public opinion polls that indicated the Republicans were about to get skunked in the elections? Who knows?
What can be known is the certainty that both President Bushes — 41 and 43 — gained before the election that something with American foreign policy had to give, and soon.
What “gave” was the roof on the Republican House and possibly the Senate, as well as the one over Don Rumsfeld’s head.
What might have been gained is the critical insight that America can leave Iraq sooner rather than later, and without leaving it completely naked to face an enemy clothed by Iran.
Now the question looms: If exiting Iraq is possible now, wasn’t it also possible months ago, when the GOP’s political grave hadn’t yet been dug?
As crucial as that question is, it’s only a rhetorical one now. More to the point, it’s now plain that the elders of the Bush dynasty have stuck their boots in the muck created by the current president’s commitment in Iraq. They want to end George W. Bush’s Vietnam, not by giving in, but by reducing America’s role and, by that, soon ending American casualties.
Rumsfeld was about brawn. Gates is about brains. Considering Tuesday’s elections, a little more gray matter might be in order to fix what’s the matter in Iraq.
Matt Towery is a former National Republican legislator of the year and author of Powerchicks: How Women Will Dominate America.
Copyright © 2006 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.
Robert Downey Jr. singing…
Thanks to Rosie.com…
With this week’s release of more than 3,000 Justice Department e-mail messages about the dismissal of eight federal prosecutors, it seems clear that politics played a role in the ousters.
Of course, as one of the eight, I’ve felt this way for some time. But now that the record is out there in black and white for the rest of the country to see, the argument that we were fired for “performance related� reasons (in the words of Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty) is starting to look more than a little wobbly.
United States attorneys have a long history of being insulated from politics. Although we receive our appointments through the political process (I am a Republican who was recommended by Senator Pete Domenici), we are expected to be apolitical once we are in office. I will never forget John Ashcroft, then the attorney general, telling me during the summer of 2001 that politics should play no role during my tenure. I took that message to heart. Little did I know that I could be fired for not being political.
Politics entered my life with two phone calls that I received last fall, just before the November election. One came from Representative Heather Wilson and the other from Senator Domenici, both Republicans from my state, New Mexico.
Ms. Wilson asked me about sealed indictments pertaining to a politically charged corruption case widely reported in the news media involving local Democrats. Her question instantly put me on guard. Prosecutors may not legally talk about indictments, so I was evasive. Shortly after speaking to Ms. Wilson, I received a call from Senator Domenici at my home. The senator wanted to know whether I was going to file corruption charges — the cases Ms. Wilson had been asking about — before November. When I told him that I didn’t think so, he said, “I am very sorry to hear that,� and the line went dead.
A few weeks after those phone calls, my name was added to a list of United States attorneys who would be asked to resign — even though I had excellent office evaluations, the biggest political corruption prosecutions in New Mexico history, a record number of overall prosecutions and a 95 percent conviction rate. (In one of the documents released this week, I was deemed a “diverse up and comer� in 2004. Two years later I was asked to resign with no reasons given.)
When some of my fired colleagues — Daniel Bogden of Las Vegas; Paul Charlton of Phoenix; H. E. Cummins III of Little Rock, Ark.; Carol Lam of San Diego; and John McKay of Seattle — and I testified before Congress on March 6, a disturbing pattern began to emerge. Not only had we not been insulated from politics, we had apparently been singled out for political reasons. (Among the Justice Department’s released documents is one describing the office of Senator Domenici as being “happy as a clam� that I was fired.)
As this story has unfolded these last few weeks, much has been made of my decision to not prosecute alleged voter fraud in New Mexico. Without the benefit of reviewing evidence gleaned from F.B.I. investigative reports, party officials in my state have said that I should have begun a prosecution. What the critics, who don’t have any experience as prosecutors, have asserted is reprehensible — namely that I should have proceeded without having proof beyond a reasonable doubt. The public has a right to believe that prosecution decisions are made on legal, not political, grounds.
What’s more, their narrative has largely ignored that I was one of just two United States attorneys in the country to create a voter-fraud task force in 2004. Mine was bipartisan, and it included state and local law enforcement and election officials.
After reviewing more than 100 complaints of voter fraud, I felt there was one possible case that should be prosecuted federally. I worked with the F.B.I. and the Justice Department’s public integrity section. As much as I wanted to prosecute the case, I could not overcome evidentiary problems. The Justice Department and the F.B.I. did not disagree with my decision in the end not to prosecute.
Good has already come from this scandal. Yesterday, the Senate voted to overturn a 2006 provision in the Patriot Act that allows the attorney general to appoint indefinite interim United States attorneys. The attorney general’s chief of staff has resigned and been replaced by a respected career federal prosecutor, Chuck Rosenberg. The president and attorney general have admitted that “mistakes were made,� and Mr. Domenici and Ms. Wilson have publicly acknowledged calling me.
President Bush addressed this scandal yesterday. I appreciate his gratitude for my service — this marks the first time I have been thanked. But only a written retraction by the Justice Department setting the record straight regarding my performance would settle the issue for me.
David C. Iglesias was United States attorney for the District of New Mexico from October 2001 through last month.
Wilson – Gonzales – Dominici should resign – this is all about if you don’t kiss political ass you are out….
Borrowed from Rosie.com [thanks Rosie]
