Charles Carreon, The Arizona Kid

Identified as a trouble maker by the authorities since childhood, and resolved to live up to the description, Charles Carreon soon discovered that mischief is most effectively fomented through speech. Having mastered the art of flinging verbal pipe-bombs and molotov cocktails at an early age, he refined his skills by writing legal briefs and journalistic exposes, while developing a poetic style that meandered from the lyrical to the political. Journey with him into the dark caves of the human experience, illuminated by the torch of an outraged sense of injustice.

Re: Charles Carreon, The Arizona Kid

Postby admin » Thu Oct 03, 2013 7:08 am

MORE ON THE PLAME AFFAIR: IS FLEISCHER HIDING BEHIND ROVE?, by Charles Carreon

4:56 pm, July 27, 2005

You know, “some people say” that shit-eating grin on Rove's face has been bugging them lately. They wonder if he's the pseudo-scapegoat, as in, the guy with the bulletproof hide who can take the hits that Fleischer couldn't.

Ari Fleischer quit his job the day Richard Novak outed Valerie Plame, and went off to hide in the woods, according to today's NYT:

New York Times, July 27, 2005

From the road, it is barely possible to see the home where Ari Fleischer lives. Tucked away behind a secured fence and a thicket of shrubbery (never say ”bushes“), Mr. Fleischer, the former White House press secretary, is right where he wants to be these days: nearly invisible.


Ari Fleischer was in the airplane when Sec. of State William Powell was walking around with a classified memo that undermined the Nigerian yellowcake lie that his boss was about broadcast to all humanity during the ”State of the Union Address.“ Rove supposedly learned about Valerie's identity as a CIA agent during that flight, when he saw the memo. However, according to undisclosed sources willing to breach Grand Jury secrecy, Fleischer said he never saw the memo. Yeah, right! You can imagine Rove, Powell and Bush all agreeing solemnly, ”Don't tell Ari about the CIA agent whose husband is giving us a screwing on the Niger yellowcakestory!“ Fleischer would be like, ”Okay, guys, what's in the memo?"

But how about this for a ridiculous spin:

NYT:

Mr. Fleischer, as White House spokesman, delivered the White House pronouncements about the Iraq war in the weeks after the invasion began in March 203. But he was never part of Mr. Bush's inner circle, and he was not the only member of the Bush communications team involved in trying to counter Mr. Wilson's critique of prewar intelligence.


Well if Ari wasn't part of the Bush inner circle, then there's only one person in that inner circle — Karl Rove. So by deflecting blame from Fleischer, the NYT is helping refocus on Rove, who is free to hide his head in the sand, since he has a bulletproof ass.

And while Ari mayn't have been ”the only member ... trying to counter“ Wilson's outing of the President for using a knowingly false Niger yellowcake story, he was certainly one of the very top members of that ”communications team.“

Apparently, Ari's book, ”Taking Heat: The President, The Press, and My Years in The White House," wraps up with a description of the first storm warnings that blew up around the Plame Affair:

Ari Fleischer's book wrote:

A controversy raged over the accuracy of a claim the president had made in his State of the Union Address concerning Iraq's efforts to obtain uranium from Africa [and so] for more than 45 minutes, the press and I enjoyed our last clash.


Well, Ari may wish that were true, but I'm afraid he might have a few more questions to answer.
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Re: Charles Carreon, The Arizona Kid

Postby admin » Thu Oct 03, 2013 7:12 am

JOHN G. ROBERTS & THE FLORIDA REPUBLICAN BUCKET BRIGADE, by Charles Carreon

2:50 am, July 29, 2005

Y'all remember Katherine Harris, the Florida Secretary of State that stopped the hand recounts in Palm Beach and other contested precincts that had been undertaken in order to count a host of Democratic votes that had turned up missing, uncounted, and miscounted. The same Katherine Harris who had removed 57,700 names from Florida's voter rolls on the grounds they were felons, even though many of the people deprived of the right to vote hadn't committed any crime at all. The same Katherine Harris who paid Choicepoint subsidiary DBT $2.3 million to “scrub” the voter database after firing the company that was doing the job the year before for a mere $5,700. Uh, yes, the same Choicepoint that lost the 4,000,000 names and related personal information earlier this year.

Greg Palast wrote about Harris' blatantly unfair voter de-registration policies, that affected not only the presidential vote, but also Jeb Bush's re-election race against Democratic challenger Bill McBride.

Greg Palast writing for Slate.com

Florida is the only state paying a private company that promises to ”cleanse" voter rolls. The state signed a $4 million contract with DBT in 1998 (since 1999 a division of ChoicePoint of Atlanta) to create the scrub list, called the central voter file, which was mandated by a 1998 state voter-fraud law. *** Florida paid DBT $4.3 million over three years to help identify felons illegally registered to vote, replacing a company that had charged the state only $5,700 per year for this work ... because the giant database operator, which aids the FBI on manhunts, offered to verify the accuracy of the list using several of its 1,200 databases [and] by telephone calls . . . . But, with the state's permission, DBT skipped those costly cross-checks. Last February, when asked to explain why DBT was paid for verification work not done, Florida Elections Division chief Clayton Roberts ended an agreed-upon interview with this reporter, locked himself in his office, and called in state troopers to remove this reporter from the Florida capitol building in Tallahassee.


Harris sure knows how to pick her Elections Division Chief, and while Clayton Roberts may be no blood relation of John G. Roberts, I am sure they are well-acquainted based on Judge Roberts' intense labor revising briefs for the Bush campaign during the legal battles that were necessary to allow Ms. Harris' to keep her heavy hand on the throats of thousands of Florida voters, invalidating their votes for the presidential election. Jeb Bush's office tried to downplay Judge Roberts' unstinting labors to further the Bush dynastic impetus during the heady days of legal jousting that saw David Boies first win with the Florida Supreme Court to keep the recount going, and then lose before a Supreme Court opinion that has been widely denounced. As relayed by the AP, Jeb Bush's office threw cold water on the story:

Bush spokesman Jacob DiPietre

”He came down and met with the governor briefly and shared with him some of his thoughts on what he believed the governor's responsibilities were after a presidential election, a presidential election in dispute. There were several experts, including professors, scholars, constitutional experts who came down to Florida at that time and Judge Roberts was one of them.“


But a Miami Herald interview with Ted Cruz, currently Texas Solicitor General, reveals the nominee had a lead role, along with other former clerks of Justice William Rehnquist, in revising the crucial briefs and preparing George W. Bush's lawyer Ted Olson for his oral argument in front of Rehnquist. Getting Roberts on the job, according to Cruz, was a no-brainer.

Remembering those heady, sleep-deprived days, when four-hundred Florida Republican lawyers, led by teams of ”litigation lions“ and ”800 pound gorillas,“ threw themselves at the task of frustrating the Democrats' efforts to ”in effect, steal the elections,“ Cruz almost choked up with admiration for Roberts. From Cruz's viewpoint, Roberts was a hero, a selfless lawyer who ”already had a name [and] didn't need the recognition,“ but along with everyone else, he just ”grabbed a bucket" to put out the fire.

Yeah, and a hell of a dangerous fire that was — all those people counting ballots that had been carefully hidden, miscounted, misplaced. Flames were busting out all over. A conflagration of fair voting was about to engulf the process. Good thing they put that out. And everybody loves a fireman.

The Miami Herald article is at this link: http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/breaking_news
/12230971.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp

The image below is from the movie version of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. See more screen caps of great films at http://www.american-buddha.com/site.map.htm

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Re: Charles Carreon, The Arizona Kid

Postby admin » Thu Oct 03, 2013 7:17 am

LIMBAUGH EJACULATES OVER ROBERTS' GAY PRO BONO, by Charles Carreon

11:24 pm, August 5, 2005

Machiavelli said that winning makes everything all right. But sometimes it depends what you win. Back in 1996, Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts, Jr. probably didn't foresee the tsunami of antigay sentiment that would be cresting nine years later, during his nomination. That’s why, in his sixty-plus page response to the Senate’s questionnaire, he didn’t mention his signal victory before the US Supreme Court in Romer v. Evans, that overturned the majority will of the people of Colorado, who by a vote of 53.4 percent, had enacted “Amendment 2:”

Neither the state of Colorado, through any of its branches or departments, nor any of its agencies, political subdivisions, municipalities or school districts, shall enact, adopt or enforce any statute, regulation, ordinance or policy whereby homosexual, lesbian or bisexual orientation, conduct, practices or relationships shall constitute or otherwise be the basis of, or entitle any person or class of persons to have or claim any minority status, quota preferences, protected status or claim of discrimination.

After the trial judge upheld the will of the anti-gay Coloradans, the activist Colorado Supreme Court sent the case back to the trial court July 19, 1993, ordering the trial judge to subject the citizen-enacted law to “strict scrutiny,” and rule it unconstitutional unless it advanced a “compelling state interest.” This is judicial code for “Kill this monster,” because according to Ken Karst of UCLA Law, my Con Law professor, no statute ever survives strict scrutiny. Of course, Ken is rarely wrong about such things, and was right in this case. The trial court ruled the bigoted law unconstitutional on December 14, 1993. Colorado took it back to the Colorado Supreme Court, predictably lost, and appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

About this time, you would expect John G. Roberts, Jr. to be winging into the Denver airport on a mission from G-d, to put the Philistines to flight like the legal Samson he is, to send those sodomites packing with their twisted carnal lusts. And he was flying into Denver, but for all the wrong reasons. Jimmy Carter may have lusted in his heart, but Roberts manifested sympathy for people who want to love with all he wrong parts of their bodies.

Yes, John G. Roberts, Jr. spearheaded the gay drive into the vitals of the nation’s jurisprudence, upending the law, and debauching it to accommodate the unnatural desires of those who cannot understand that sex and marriage were meant by G-d to be a purely heterosexual phenomenon. Penises go into vaginas, and into nothing else. Vaginas are to be penetrated only be penises. Get it straight! Roberts did not, and most unfortunately, pitched the Supreme Court to the left, getting a clear 6-3 majority that marginalized his future buddies, Chief Justice Rehnquist, Justice Scalia, and Justice Thomas, who squeaked out a 3-man dissent. Whoa! Talk about being on the wrong side of the issue!

Limbaugh, the dopehead, is on a rant about this, and you can basically start working on a crucifix for Roberts. This hired gun is in a world of hurt, and claiming to be a hired gun isn’t going to get him out of it. According to the New York Times, this Romer case is a double black mark against Roberts. First, he was doing pro bono, which is totally gross, and worse, he was lavishing this disgusting free work on people who have sex in ways that Rush only fantasizes about.

But the Democrats will probably screw it up by going on the attack now, instead of letting the Publicans burn their own man alive. Every hear about the inventor of The Brass Bull? It was a torture device in which the victim was imprisoned in the “belly” of the brass bull, and then roasted slowly so their agonized cries issued from the bowels of the bull for hours. Legend says that the creator of the horrific device, who had thought to please a cruel king with his invention, instead invoked the king’s most perverse impulse, who directed that the inventor be the first to taste the fruits of his genius, and promptly roasted him, commenting on how well the device worked.

Through his pro bono work in Florida, John G. Roberts, Jr. saddled the nation with the president he thought we should have. And due to his misplaced sympathies for the sexual underclass, he will now be denied admission to the highest seat of power. Ironic, or merely just? Let’s wait and see.
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Re: Charles Carreon, The Arizona Kid

Postby admin » Thu Oct 03, 2013 7:18 am

GROKSTER: THE ASTEROID THAT KILLED THE MEDIA DINOSAURS, by Charles Carreon

6:36 pm, August 7, 2005

On June 27, 2005, the Supreme Court decided MGM v. Grokster. From the sounds in the press, you'd think Hollywood won. But before we get into that, let's address a fundamental question: What does “Grok” mean? Although it sounds like something a psychedelic toad might say, it's actually a verb invented by Robert Heinlein, to describe an enhanced way of knowing other people, in his hilarious scifi spoof of hippies and psychics, “Stranger In A Strange Land.” The novel hasn’t been popular since the seventies, though, and this literary allusion has probably had little significance for most Grokster users, who just want to get free music. In that regard, Grokster was very helpful. As Justice Souter wrote in Grokster: “The record is replete with evidence that from the moment Grokster and StreamCast began to distribute their free software, each one clearly voiced the objective that recipients use it to download copyrighted works, and each took active steps to encourage infringement.”

That was bad, as you might have guessed. Because thievery is bad, and giving people tools to steal, while suggesting they can’t be caught, is inducing people to steal, which is bad enough to make honest people stay out of the business. And by and large, I think honest people stayed out of the business of providing tools specifically marketed to the infringing public.

Grokster marked no change in the law, however, and for Hollywood's long term interests, that was a disappointment. The Ninth Circuit has merely been directed to impose liability for copyright infringement where the manufacturer clearly identifies infringement as the raison d' etre of the product. That was the case with Napster, and it has to be the case with Grokster, Morpheus, and Kazaa, the other defendants in the case. Advocating thievery by means of your device is unlawful, and it doesn't matter that you don't sell the software, particularly where the software is purveyed via a “free software” scheme that plants spyware and advertising on your desk or laptop computer. That was of course the case with Kazaa, which brought millions of desktop machines to a standstill, able only to stream banners, popups, and other garbage.

Justice Souter’s opinion described the Ninth Circuit’s holding as follows:

Justice Souter in MGM v. Grokster

The Ninth Circuit [concluded that] distribution of a commercial product capable of substantial noninfringing uses could not give rise to contributory liability for infringement unless the distributor had actual knowledge of specific instances of infringement and failed to act on that knowledge. The fact that the software was capable of substantial noninfringing uses in the Ninth Circuit's view meant that Grokster and StreamCast were not liable, because they had no such actual knowledge, owing to the decentralized architecture of their software. The court also held that Grokster and StreamCast did not materially contribute to their users' infringement because it was the users themselves who searched for, retrieved, and stored the infringing files, with no involvement by the defendants beyond providing the software in the first place.


What is this about “substantial noninfringing uses?” Since when did anyone load Grokster, Streatmcast, Morpheus, Kazaa or any other “FastTrack-based” P2P system on their machine so they could engage in a noninfringing use? Napster and the Grokster defendants were all disseminating software that induced people to steal. The trial judge killed Napster because Shawn Fanning had clearly announced at the start of the venture his intention to encourage piracy. Napster had substantial non-infringing uses, in a theoretical sense, but that didn’t save it from being sued out of existence, so what was the difference between Fanning’s piratical venture and the software at issue in Grokster? Napster stored the infringing content on its own severs, whereas the FastTrack based P2P software allowed each desktop user to treat the whole Internet as a hard drive, thus eliminating the need for the server. The Supreme Court saw this as a distinction without a difference – the point wasn’t how the software worked, but how it was marketed. Marketing discloses the intention, wrongful or otherwise, of the software distributor. In order to avoid infringement suits, anyone who sells software utilities that copy content as part of their use and value should never announce, as an incentive, that their product can be used to commit theft.

Of course, some people like to popularize the “grey” character of their ware, but they are often swindlers with strange agendas. Steve Cohen trumpeted the piratical utility of his Earth Station 5 web-based P2P utility by declaring ES Five to be “at war with the RIAA.” Cohen supposedly housed the venture in Jenin, Palestine, and said he was never served with a lawsuit because no process servers would go there. Probably there was no one in Palestine — who would work there when they could just work in Israel and claim to work in Jenin using a mail drop? Steve's dodges are so predictable, but once you have the Washington Post repeating your cover story, like Cohen did back in February 2004, you're in good shape. The intrepid old swindler told me half of his purpose in running the site, which stole and re-streamed “The Naked News” from http://www.es-5.com, was to offend the owners of Wired Solutions, the creators of the Naked News. But when Ashcroft said he was going to go criminal on copyright infringers, Cohen decided to get out of the business, because he didn't want to be involved with anything criminal. He said he was not bothered by the civil arrest warrant he's been subject to since 2001 for failing to appear in San Jose US District Court as ordered by Judge James A. Ware in Kremen v. Cohen.

Altruistic as Cohen’s campaign to free content from its owners might have been, it wasn't lawful, and he was well aware of his vulnerability to civil lawsuits, which was one of his announced reasons for locating in Palestine, a non-nation in which even the rules on local service of process are unsettled. Still, that would be no comfort to him if Ashcroft put him on a wanted listed and faxed it to Interpol, because Steve now runs casinos worldwide and doesn’t need extra heat, so he surfed right out of the infringement business. Having been to Club Fed once, he claims to be disinterested in anything would spark a return visit, and realized that his “declaration of war” would seal his doom if Ashcroft wanted to start swearing out indictments and arrest warrants.

How could the Ninth Circuit could ever insulate these defendants from liability? How could you immunize companies that were started by crooks seeking to circumvent the effect of the Napster decision by “decentralizing” their business operations, that turned all their users into infringers and scofflaws, got some of them sued, and captured all the cash? Not to mention that they deliberately fed a huge, ultra-high-tech piracy network to make sure their uses had plenty of stolen files to “trade.” (Wired article.)

Kids and grannies get sued for using Kazaa, after being encouraged to use it for that purpose, but Kazaa is not infringing? Hold it a minute! You’re trying to treat them like the Publicans treat gun manufacturers – as not responsible for the injuries their products cause? And therein, my friend, lies the difference. Gun manufacturers carefully avoid marketing to criminals. They explicitly market to the hunting, home defense, and target-shooting consumers. They don’t have to market the utility of their products to murderers, armed robbers, rapists, terrorists, and rogue cops. Hollywood has done that work for free. And Hollywood was the plaintiff in Grokster, of course, which illuminates the most important legal principle here, as in every case: “Whose ox is gored?”

Whose ox indeed? To understand the depth of this legal principle, let us return to the “Betamax Case,” Universal v. Sony, 104 S. Ct. 774. Who had oxen in that goring contest? Sony, the maker of the Betamax video recorder, which could record TV shows off the air, was sued by Universal, the maker of movies that are licensed for showing on TV. Today, of course, Sony-Time-Life is the largest producer of entertainment in the world, and is currently recycling TV reruns on the big screen in “Bewitched.” Nowadays, Universal and Sony are on the same side of the issue, and Sony would never sell such a “disruptive” technology, and indeed, has introduced only unpopular digital music devices, primarily because of their insistence on using proprietary technology like the “mini-disc” and proprietary file systems for VAIO PCs. These are habits Sony picked up since it became a content mogul, so frankly, the Betamax case is a mistake that Sony will never make again.

But let’s hit rewind and go back to those crazy days in 1976, when the Betamax invaded American homes. This machine ushered in the video store and porn boom, let people watch Monday Night Football on six other nights of the week, and let them zap advertising, that obnoxious time-thief that dilutes the pure entertainment value of a show or movie. Why did Universal lose that case? Well first, what did Universal contend? They claimed that any machine that could clip broadcasts out of the air that were only licensed to be shown by the TV networks for one, very expensive time period, shouldn’t become permanently licensed to the viewers who happen to tape the show when it was showing, using the clever timer that allowed people to start recording even while they were away. Then they come home and watch it, zapping ads all the way. This, it was universally agreed all up and down Sunset Boulevard and south to Olympic Boulevard at least, could not be right.

But you know what? That Monday Night Football turned out to be mighty important. The NFL and other sporting entities said they weren’t Hollywood, they weren’t making movies, they were playing sports, and even professional sports were meant to be played once and enjoyed, studied, analyzed and treasured forever. Why not just confiscate all the photos of Babe Ruth and Mickey Mantle hitting home runs? Why not indeed, Hollywood echoed, but their cries went unheeded, and all the professional sports teams and college leagues came out in favor of the value of the Betamax’s broadcast-taping capability. This was indeed a “substantial, non-infringing use” of some importance to the Supreme Court. Sports, and the interests of athletic associations, always seem to get extra-deferential treatment from the Supremes. Baseball, for example, enjoys a unique freedom from liability under the Antitrust laws for which there is no precedent other than that it is the national game, and presumably, must be rigged to protect the public. Take note, however, that professional sports did not weigh in on the side of the defendants in the Grokster case, and why should they? Sports videos were not widely shared on Kazaa any more than other public domain materials.

The second notable feature of the Betamax opinion is its conclusion that once content is broadcast over the airwaves even once, and made available for capture by this new technology, it enjoys diminished protection forever. If you can spring for a VCR, you can get your copy of Bambi virtually free, after you edit out all of the Tinkerbell visits and toy ads. Universal howled at this result like a banshee deprived of the opportunity to consume its firstborn. Record the whole damn thing! How could that be “fair use,” that previously had seemed to allow authors to quote brief portions of copyrighted works for scholarly or critical purposes? But the Supremes basically said – hey, you put it out there, now they got it, and they have the right to have it. People were surprised at this ruling, but for the first time it put teeth in a provision of the Federal Copyright Statutes that had really been ignored – 17 U.S.C. Section 107. In Section 107, Congress made it very clear that copyright protection is limited by the public’s pre-existing right of fair use of the author’s works, thus recognizing the importance of the audience in the creative dialogue. In other words, the author can obtain copyright protection, but it is “subject to” the right of the public to read, discuss, study, copy, criticize, and otherwise expose the work to criticism and appreciation. Of course, otherwise, copyright law would at minimum silence free speech. This has been successfully accomplished of course, by major news entities, that have been allowed to copyright the President’s Speeches, thus locking them out of the public domain. No one has yet challenged that, but the challenge, once made, will be successful. The President is no one’s actor, at least not according to the Constitution and Section 107.

Who is reading Grokster very carefully? All purveyors of free software that in any way utilize the copying of copyrightable content as part of its package of product benefits. Google, for example, is a free software scheme that has already scared the bejeezus out of the world’s advertising agencies and content monopolists. Witness the hue and cry over Google’s threat to put all the world's books online. That fact is, if we don't start putting libraries online, reading books will become about as popular as polo in Greenland.

Since all that Grokster really said is that you can’t advertise burglar tools as burglar tools – you have to call them omnidrectional screwdrivers. Anyone who thinks that inviting people to use your software to commit theft is a good idea is not a business partner, he or she is an RIAA private investigator looking to set you up! So keep on cranking out that P2P software, and emphasize not the pleasures of theft, but the joys of sharing public domain materials, engaging in fair use such as study, discussion, and criticism. After all, how can you study music but by listening to it? Do music teachers have to license their lessons? Suppose Kurt Cobain had been required to pay to listen to the radio? C’mon – the listener becomes the creator by listening, by studying. Media has value only when it’s consumed.

The future of media distribution is not in monopolization of creative production by either the imposition of artificial limits on distribution (the Clipper Chip, the V-Chip, the Broadcast Flag, and other Cripple-ware). The days are over when the media monopolists could enforce their monopoly through production and distribution bottlenecks (CD pressing, transporting, and selling through retail outlets), while simultaneously engaging in price-fixing schemes such as the one that the RIAA settled with the FTC in 2004 for a $450 Million fine. The days of endless gravy are over. It’s time for the dinosaurs of LA to sell their Wilshire condos and move to Australia, Israel, Florida, or Arizona. Their work is done, their sun has set. Ovitz is a washed up joke. Eisner hung around too long. Lucas has at last completed the longest shaggy dog story in history, and Steve Jobs is a bigger media mogul than Barry Diller. We can only hope that their jaded, tired vision of our world will depart with them.

http://rapeutation.com/kremen_v._cohen.pdf
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Re: Charles Carreon, The Arizona Kid

Postby admin » Thu Oct 03, 2013 7:26 am

CITIZENS FIND VOICE IN BATTLE TO SAVE ROASTING COMPANY, by Charles Carreon

August 11, 2005

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The parking lot was full at City Hall on Tuesday night. For weeks Ashland had been bubbling with the news that the City Attorney had ruled that the Rogue Valley Roasting Company, an East Main Ashland landmark with a broad clientele, was operating without required City permits. Coming hot on the heels of the Chief Bianca dust-up, the flap over The Roasting Company seemed ill-timed, publicity-wise. The fact that the anti-coffee-house action had been instigated at the direct request of City Councilwoman Cate Hartzell, whose home lies across from the popular shop, seemed to have especially raised hackles. Adding to this the fact that The Roasting Company had strong local support, the heavy turnout was not unexpected.

In what struck many of the waiting citizens as a ploy to delay their involvement, two other matters consumed the first two hours of the Commission meeting. It was around nine o’clock and still standing room only in the Ashland City Council Chamber when the Planning Commission took up Planning Action 2005-01313, “An Appeal to the Planning Commission of a Staff Advisor determination that the current use of the subject property at 917 E. Main Street as a coffee shop is an illegal, non-conforming use in violation of Ashland Municipal Code 18.68.090.” Appellant Jerry Quast, the proprietor of The Roasting Company, was represented by Alan Harper, seeking to overturn the verdict of illegality that Asst. City Attorney Mike Reeder had imposed on the Ashland landmark.

Jerry and Deborah Quast’s business life hung in the balance. The bad news had arrived in a letter dated April 5, 2005, signed by John McLaughlin, Ashland’s Director of Community Development. McLaughlin’s letter told Jerry and Deborah that “the City of Ashland … has determined that … your occupancy of the site as a coffee shop is considered illegal [therefore you] are required to apply for a Conditional Use Permit [and] failure to apply for a permit will result in the City being required to take enforcement action.”

What had brought this meteorite crashing down upon their heads, the Quasts asked themselves? The answers would come in good time. On March 17, 2005, Cate Hartzell had sent a letter to City Manager Gino Grimaldi that accused The Roasting Company of a serious offense: “The Rogue Valley Roasting Company has become successful; unfortunately, the neighbors pay the cost and the City stepped away from its role.” Success often leads to a fall, but for The Roasting Company, it seemed too ironic. The booming trade at the coffeehouse, that seems to funnel hundreds of people of every age and description through on a good day, is a symbol of the city’s vitality. Equally important, and perhaps equally offensive to its detractors, over the years The Roasting Company became a public forum where people could meet away from the homogenized coffee ambiance that saturates the town. The Roasting Company, its scores of supporters made clear, provides a welcome antidote to the corporate blandness that has invaded Ashland insidiously over the last thirty years. For Councilwoman Hartzell to attack The Roasting Company seemed surprisingly insensitive, a bureaucratic faux pas that attracted notice from supporters and opponents alike.

Passing beyond the touchy-feely realm, the sudden appearance of a real threat to the existence of The Roasting Company touched a nerve of self-protectiveness in the Ashland core. Heavens, thought many, where will I get coffee and a bagel? Plus, many old timers have bought food and drinks at that location for four decades, and the very idea that the place could be shut down for a zoning violation seemed ludicrous. For their part, the Quasts have always been squeaky clean. After they bought the property in 1994, City planning employee Bill Molnar told them they didn’t need a Conditional Use Permit to operate a coffee shop because of its historic uses. In other words, the property was “grandfathered” as a grocery store deli/coffeeshop. When the Quasts made indoor improvements and added a deck to the coffeehouse in July, 1998, City planning employees Mark Knox signed off on building and zoning permits with full knowledge of current use as a coffeehouse. Internal City memoranda acknowledged that the Quast’s property had been grandfathered for the coffeehouse use. What could be more secure?

But trouble sneaks up when you rarely expect it, and it turned out that having a City Councilperson across the street from the business was not a good thing. And having obliging lawyers in the City Attorney’s office who work at the behest of the City Council ready to field complaints for City insiders may be the type of problem that just plain folks have a nose for. Assistant City Attorney Mike Reeder told the Commissioners that after investigating Councilwoman Hartzell’s complaints, he had found no grounds for taking action against The Roasting Company’s operation, but that after a searching review of the file, he had discovered that City planners had made errors that had to be corrected by having The Roasting Company’s owners file for a Conditional Use Permit. Reeder explained that “the rule of law” demanded that The Roasting Company’s operation be brought into compliance, or face enforcement proceedings. Without apologies, he urged the Commission to uphold his finding that a “change in use” which occurred during a rather vague time period in the nineties, rendered the presence of the coffeehouse illegal. Reeder counseled the Commissioners to disregard any arguments about the untimeliness of the City’s negative land use action, because the landowner “has the burden” of remaining in compliance with local laws, regardless of whatever reassurances they might receive from City officers. Thus, without saying it, Reeder seemed to be articulating a new rule – the citizen must pay when the City discovers its own “errors” years after the fact. Alan Harper argued that the delay was all-important and barred any action by the City against the existing grandfathered use, because the 1998 permit signoff by Mark Knox was a “final land use action” to which objections had to be filed within a very short time frame, and they were now nearly seven years too late. Reeder’s five-page, single-spaced decision convicted The Roasting Company of illegal operation only after awkwardly attempting to explain away the problem of untimeliness, but the verbose legal essay came off as a sophomoric piece of pettifoggery, if the three retired attorneys who testified at the hearing were any sort of jury. Certainly the crowd were having none of Reeder’s lawyerly fancy steps, as he learned when he harvested catcalls from the crowd after inadvertently disclosing his view that the opinions of citizens were “not relevant.” But still, on any ordinary night, the paper-pushers would have won. But this was a different night. The crowd did not disperse, and one sensed they would not leave quietly without being given their due.

Chair John Fields managed the proceedings sensitively, and the Commissioners, after initially seeming somewhat alarmed at the extraordinarily large turnout, gamely extended the time for the hearing until 11 o’clock. The citizen speakers were notably concise, clocking in, on average, at no more than 40 seconds beyond the 3-minute limit. Several speakers commented on the tardiness of the City’s action, and the fact that the City’s ruling of illegality was based on the City’s admission that it had erred twice in permitting the coffeehouse to operate without requiring a Conditional Use Permit. It did appear, as John Gaffey observed, that the City Attorney’s office had made a mess and dumped it in the Planning Commission’s lap. Several speakers echoed this opinion, noting that the City should not penalize a landowner for “errors” that had been “found” by Asst. City Attorney Reeder after looking for some grounds to satisfy Councilwoman Hartzell’s demand for “City involvement” in her neighborhood relations. Several citizens complained that the proceedings were “a travesty,” speculating that real estate interests might be attempting to oust a successful business in order to convert the location to multi-unit housing, and one The Roasting Company supporter bluntly stated that “Something stinks. Something stinks and everyone here in this room can smell it.” No one disagreed with him, and I for one did not smell coffee.

After the testimony of the citizens, Cate Hartzell, who entered and left the Chamber as if on cue, gave her testimony in the sincere voice we have come to recognize as her hallmark. However, she spoke so softly that it almost seemed as if she wished to speak privately with the Commissioners, and displayed only one photograph to the Commission that she said was representative of many more that she had back at her home. One wag in the audience wondered whether this was an invitation for all of the citizens, or just the Commissioners, to stop by and flip through her album of The Roasting Company surveillance photos.

After the testimony of the complaining Councilor, the issue was brought to a vote on the motion of Commissioner Ken Kairn, after the motion of Commissioner John Stromberg to allow time for discussion failed for lack of a second. The vote was 7-to-2 in favor of overturning the City’s finding of illegality. One opposing vote was cast by Olena Black, who sought to stretch the Commission’s jurisdiction to encompass considerations of whether The Roasting Company’s provision of free wireless Internet had “changed the use” of the coffeeshop. The second dissenting vote was from John Stromberg, whose motion for further discussion and delay received no second.

The Quasts had been cut down from the gallows, and none too soon. Afterward, Jerry Quast clearly seemed emotionally drained, and when I asked him for a comment, he almost seemed not to be believing how things had gone as he simply repeated, “We never thought we had done anything wrong.” Indeed, he had not, and as one former City employee said in his testimony, the event was an embarrassment to the City, for which the Quasts should receive an apology and compensation for their legal fees. With land use lawyers running about $300/hour, the Quasts are going to have to sell a lot of coffee to get back to where they were before their powerful neighbor, with the help of a lot of free legal work from the City Attorney’s office, declared war on their business. But that’s politics, and when you are fighting City Hall, sometimes just surviving to fight another day is a big win.

For the community, the win could not be clearer. The Planning Commission has been informed that they are not be used as an ad hoc grievance council for liveability issues, and that “success” is not a reason to close a local business, regardless of who lives across the street from it.
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Re: Charles Carreon, The Arizona Kid

Postby admin » Thu Oct 03, 2013 7:31 am

BIANCA, THE PEOPLE'S CHIEF, by Charles Carreon

August 11, 2005

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Jeff Golden: “We are not the fringe."

Chief Bianca’s Shadowy Enemy

On the last Friday in July, APD Chief Mike Bianca’s supporters not only rallied in support of their Chief, they leveled harsh criticism at the secretive group of APD “sworn and unsworn officers” who have targeted Bianca for removal. Oregon law doesn’t recognize the authority of an “unsworn peace officer,” but that is how some members are described. This paper has been unable to obtain additional information on which of the dissidents are actually APD employees, and which are “hobby cops,” because the dissidents hold secret meetings and refuse to disclose their names, claiming fear of retaliation.

Passing the $35,000 Buck

Despite their cloaked identities, the anonymous complainers have been granted credibility by City officials, who have agreed that the cost of passing this buck is going to be $35,000 – the amount of money allocated to hire “outside consultants” to help Chief Bianca communicate with the secretive sworn and unsworn officers. Among other resolutions reached by the crowd at the most recent rally was to present a request to the City Council to not spend that money, and instead simply lend their support to the Chief by affirming his authority over the dissidents.

A Bizarre Complaint Reveals An Alien Psychology

In the eyes of Bianca’s supporters, the complaints of the dissidents became absurd when they claimed that the Chief’s skillful resolution of a confrontation with a knife-wielding youth without resort to homicide was actually a tactical error that would put future officers in danger. Why? Because, as Officer Teresa Selby stated, the suspect should have been “drilled,” failing to note that “drilling” tends to be lethal, and the person that Chief Bianca saved from drilling was a very intelligent local man whose parents are longtime SOU faculty members. This tunnel-visioned focus on “officer safety” to the exclusion of all other concerns was commented upon by many of the speakers, who noted that aside from the Chief and one Sergeant, none of the APD officers are Ashland residents. As more speakers were heard, especially the young people who apparently get the brunt of the APD’s acting out, it became apparent that many of them felt that APD cops view Ashlanders as aliens because they do not share their generally liberal political and cultural views.

Cut From Different Wood

Unlike the secret critics who have drawn a bead on Chief Bianca, he is a longtime Ashland resident who worked his way into the job through security in Lithia Park. Once at Garfield Park, the stories about the Chief began flowing from the microphone, making it clear that this cop is cut from a different type of wood than your average Taser-toter. Bianca is gifted with empathy, not usually a characteristic prized by patrol officers, and respects the emotions of bereavement, fear and loss that arise in connection with the traumatic events that life inevitably deals us, and that peace officers are supposed to help us deal with. Unlike many cops, Bianca clearly doesn’t crave “action” any more than citizens want trouble with the police. According to Bianca’s supporters, he’s the right cop for the job, and they actually fear that without his influence, the cops in this town could get rougher, more arbitrary, and even start doing a little drilling.

Lightweight Gear, Plenty of Speakers

Approximately thirty-seven people spoke at the rally once the marchers arrived at Garfield Park, where the Instant Runoff Voting supporters had already set up a table in the shade. The two groups joined forces and agendas, and fired up some amplification when one of the rally organizers, former Deputy DA Charles Carreon, arrived in a bright red, jury-rigged sound truck, flying a hybrid US/Peace flag, plastered with pictures of Bianca. During the march, Carreon’s wife Tara piloted the outlandish vehicle up and down the main streets, while Carreon serenaded and peptalked marchers, citizens and anyone who would listen to his impromptu political verses. Some folks look great with a microphone in hand, and all of these people had one thing in mind – getting the City’s leaders off the fence and squarely in Chief Bianca’s corner. Looking at their faces reminded some folks of 1968.

“Not The Fringe”

NPR Radio host Jeff Golden concluded the rally by responding to one speaker’s fear that those present were not important enough to influence the debate: “We are not the fringe, but a true cross-section of Ashland, and all of America.” And he should know.

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Re: Charles Carreon, The Arizona Kid

Postby admin » Thu Oct 03, 2013 7:34 am

FOX-DRUDGE ON SHEEHAN: WHAT SHIT WILL FOOLS NOT EAT?, by Charles Carreon

12:37 am, August 11, 2005

I will tell you candidly the last time I watched FOX channel was in 1998, during the Clinton impeachment hearings, at a Best Western in Salem, Oregon, but I still know it's just a gigantic shit IV plugged into the nation's main brain vein. And I've never read a word of Matt Drudge, but I know he's a shitbag. It kind of falls into the same category as never having visited Colombia, but still knowing it's a drug and murder capital awash in US dollars and exported iniquity. Some things you just know.

A really good poet, e.e. cummings, wrote in a wonderful poem, I Sing of Olaf Glad and Big, about how some military bastards tortured a fine man named Olaf because he had heart and told them “NO,” creatively saying, “There is some shit I will not eat.”

Do Americans, anywhere, know how to shape these words with their mouths? Can they refuse to accept the lies of people who will stoop to twisting the words of a grieving mother who gave her own child to support the vanity and greed of munitions dealers and oil mongers? This man, Drudge, if he be a man, is such a burden on the planet, it groans under the weight of him. I would never declare netwar on anyone, not like the right-to-lifers did against doctors who terminated pregnancies, but couldn't somebody just order a million pizzas and have them delivered to him? Or put his house up for sale without telling him? Or seduce him into a compromising situation and post his indiscretions for all the world to see?

Right, we all do this wish-fullfilment, because deep inside we know that people like Drudge, Murdoch, the Unnameables, all the dreadful world-wrecking shitbags, are sitting on top of the world, unshakeable, because built on the ground so stable it never shakes — the abyss of human stupidity. The answer to my question is — there is no shit fools will not eat. I have seen them eat this slander of the Sheehan woman. There is no shit they will not eat.

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, read all the poop here:

http://mediamatters.org/items/200508100009

Cindy Sheehan ”changed her story on Bush“? Tracking a lie through the conservative media

Cindy Sheehan, mother of a soldier killed in Iraq, has drawn significant media attention for staging an anti-war protest outside President Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, where she is demanding to meet with the president. On August 8, Internet gossip Matt Drudge posted an item on his website, the Drudge Report, in which he falsely claimed that Sheehan ”dramatically changed her account“ of a meeting she had with Bush in June 2004; Drudge attempted to back up his false assertion by reproducing Sheehan quotes from a 2004 newspaper article without providing their context. After the story appeared on the Drudge Report, it gained momentum among conservative weblogs and eventually reached Fox News, where it was presented as hard news and in commentaries. Media Matters for America will examine how one false story on an Internet gossip site ended up the focus of prime-time cable news coverage.

Drudge's August 8 item claiming that Sheehan had changed her story used quotes from a June 24, 2004, article in The Reporter of Vacaville, California, where Sheehan lives. The Reporter article described a meeting that Sheehan and 16 other families of soldiers killed in Iraq had with Bush in Fort Lewis, Washington, earlier that month. Sheehan's son, Army Spc. Casey Sheehan, was killed in Iraq in April 2004.

Drudge quoted Sheehan seemingly speaking glowingly of Bush: ”'I now know [Bush is] sincere about wanting freedom for the Iraqis,' Cindy said after their meeting. 'I know he's sorry and feels some pain for our loss. And I know he's a man of faith,' “ and, ”For the first time in 11 weeks, they felt whole again. 'That was the gift the president gave us, the gift of happiness, of being together,' Cindy said.“ Drudge contrasted these quotes to Sheehan's statements on the August 7 edition of CNN's Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer, in which she said, of the 2004 meeting with Bush: ”We wanted to use the time for him to know that he killed an indispensable part of our family and humanity.“

Drudge, however, took Sheehan's quotes from The Reporter out of context in falsely claiming a shift in her position. The June 24, 2004, Reporter article also quoted Sheehan expressing her misgivings about Bush and the Iraq war:

”We haven't been happy with the way the war has been handled,“ Cindy said. ”The president has changed his reasons for being over there every time a reason is proven false or an objective reached.“

The 10 minutes of face time with the president could have given the family a chance to vent their frustrations or ask Bush some of the difficult questions they have been asking themselves, such as whether Casey's sacrifice would make the world a safer place.

But in the end, the family decided against such talk, deferring to how they believed Casey would have wanted them to act. In addition, Pat noted that Bush wasn't stumping for votes or trying to gain a political edge for the upcoming election.

Moreover, Sheehan was not referring to her meeting with Bush as ”the gift the president gave us.“ She was actually referring to the trip to Seattle, as Reporter staff writer Tom Hall noted in an August 9 article responding to Drudge: ”Sheehan also said the trip to Seattle helped connect her family to others that had lost a son or daughter in Iraq. Sheehan said sharing their story with those families was rewarding, as was the time she got to spend with her own family. 'That was the gift the president gave us, the gift of happiness, of being together,' she said in the story. Drudge included that quote in his Monday morning report, but didn't explain that it referred to sharing time with her family, not the president.“

Reporter editor Diane Barney also responded to Drudge in an August 9 column, in which she said that Sheehan's positions on Bush and the war have not changed since June 2004. ”We don't think there has been a dramatic turnaround. Clearly, Cindy Sheehan's outrage was festering even then,“ Barney wrote. ”In ensuing months, she has grown more focused, more determined, more aggressive. ... We invite readers to revisit the story — in context — on our Web site and decide for themselves.“ An August 8 Editor & Publisher article quoted Barney further clarifying the paper's position: ”It's important that readers see the full context of the story, instead of just selected portions. We stand by the story as an accurate reflection of the Sheehan's take on the meeting at the time it was published.“

Throughout the day on August 8, Drudge's false story needed little time to spread to conservative weblogs:

Drudge posted the Sheehan item on August 8 at 10:11 am ET. Right-wing pundit Michelle Malkin posted the item on her weblog one hour later, at 11:22 am ET. At 12:40 pm ET, the Drudge story appeared on C-Log, the weblog of the conservative news and commentary website Townhall.com. At 2:33 pm ET, MooreWatch.com posted the story. At 3:23 pm ET, William Quick of DailyPundit.com posted the story. Fox News then picked up Drudge's distortion of Sheehan's quote. On the ”Political Grapevine“ segment of the August 8 edition of Special Report with Brit Hume, guest anchor and Fox News chief Washington correspondent Jim Angle highlighted Sheehan's supposed contradiction:

ANGLE: Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a soldier killed in Iraq last year, who's now camped outside President Bush's Crawford ranch demanding to see him, said yesterday on CNN that a private meeting with President Bush last year was offensive, insisting, quote, ”He acted like it was a party. He came in very jovial, like we should be happy with that. Our son died for the president's misguided policies.“

But just after that 2004 meeting, she gave a very different account, telling her local paper, the Vacaville Reporter, quote, ”I now know the president is sincere about wanting freedom for the Iraqis. I know he's sorry and feels some pain for our loss. And I know he's a man of faith.“ She added that President Bush, quote, ”gave us the gift of happiness of being together.“

By August 9, various journalists and progressive bloggers revealed Drudge's distortion. On Salon.com, journalist Eric Boehlert noted on August 9: ”Put in full context, Drudge's claim of a flip-flop is easily dismissed.“ RawStory.com, a progressive news website, noted that Drudge ”grossly took Sheehan out of context.“

Nevertheless, Drudge's distortion again popped up on Fox News — this time on the August 9 edition of The O'Reilly Factor. Host Bill O'Reilly made Sheehan's nonexistent contradictions the focus of his ”Talking Points Memo“ segment:

O'REILLY: The fascinating saga of Cindy Sheehan. That is the subject of this evening's ”Talking Points Memo.“ Mrs. Sheehan is protesting in Crawford, Texas, trying to convince Americans the Iraq war is wrong and the president should be impeached. She is doing so because her son Casey, an Army specialist, was killed last year in Iraq. No one has the right to intrude on Mrs. Sheehan's grief. That's number one. She's entitled to her opinion on a situation that has deeply affected her. And she's angry at the White House.

[...]

Well, here's something very strange. Two months after her son died, Cindy and her husband Patrick did meet with President Bush, as she said. After that meeting, Cindy was quoted by a California newspaper as saying, ”I now know [President Bush] is sincere about wanting freedom for the Iraqis. I know he's sorry and feels some pain for our loss.“ So Mrs. Sheehan has apparently changed her mind about the president.

[...]

In an editorial today in The New York Times, it says, ”Mr. Bush obviously failed to comfort Ms. Sheehan when he met with her and her family. More important, he has not helped the nation give fallen soldiers like Casey Sheehan the honor they deserve.“ Well, let's go back to the California article. Cindy Sheehan was quoted as saying, ”That was the gift the president gave us, the gift of happiness, of being together“ It sounds like comfort to me. What say you, New York Times?

O'Reilly then introduced his guest to comment on Sheehan — Michelle Malkin, who proclaimed that Sheehan's ”story hasn't checked out,“ to which O'Reilly readily agreed:

MALKIN: I mean, the New York Times editorial board is all too eager to prop her up as some sort of martyr and to buy her line when, clearly, her story hasn't checked out.

O'REILLY: Yes, her story hasn't [sic] changed.

MALKIN: And so I think — and I think that angle you're emphasizing is absolutely right here, which is the mainstream media just lapping this up and perpetuating myths and inaccuracies when they know it's not the truth.

O'REILLY: Yup. They don't identify — in the New York Times editorial today, it was obvious they did not say her story has been inconsistent. And they did not pinpoint that she is in bed with the radical left.

On the August 10 edition of his syndicated radio program, The Radio Factor, O'Reilly continued to assert that Sheehan had contradicted herself, stating, ”In her first meeting with the president, she was happy with him, and we read you the article that the Vacaville paper — where she's from in California — printed."

— S.S.M.

Posted to the web on Wednesday August 10, 2005 at 7:21 PM EST
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Re: Charles Carreon, The Arizona Kid

Postby admin » Thu Oct 03, 2013 9:32 pm

CINDY SHEEHAN TO BUSH: "YOU'RE GOING THE WRONG WAY", by Charles Carreon

2:06 am, August 11, 2005

http://www.buzzflash.com/interviews/04/10/int04050.html

Cindy Sheehan Is Working To Bring Our Troops Home: ”Mr. President. You have daughters. How would you feel if one of them was killed?“

A BUZZFLASH INTERVIEW

Casey Sheehan re-enlisted with the Army in August of 2003, knowing that his unit would eventually be deployed in Iraq. Casey, a Humvee mechanic with the 1st Calvary, was killed in Sadr City on April 4th of this year. He was only 24 years old. He is and forever will remain an American hero.

Casey’s mom, Cindy Sheehan, is a hero too. Angered that her son was sent to fight and die in an unjust war for reasons that have proven to be lies, Cindy is speaking out about the Iraq invasion. Cindy has joined other moms and families who have lost loved ones in the conflict to tell Americans about the true costs of the war. Their group, Real Voices http://realvoices.org/rv/index.html , is running television ads featuring the voices of Americans like Cindy speaking directly to President Bush about the impact of his failed policies and lies.

We are honored to bring you our interview with Cindy Sheehan about her son Casey and why she decided to speak out about the Iraq war.

* * *

BuzzFlash: Your son Casey died April 4 in Iraq. Whom do you hold responsible for your loss?

Cindy Sheehan: George W. Bush.

BuzzFlash: Why?

Cindy Sheehan: I think he rushed into this war -–this invasion –- without having proper intelligence. And the reasons he went are so clearly wrong -–from his false claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction to there being no connection between Iraq and Saddam and Osama bin Laden. He diverted attention and troops and resources from Afghanistan and Al Qaeda to Iraq.

I don’t think Iraq has anything to do with the war on terror, except now terrorists are crossing the borders to go and kill innocent Iraqis and our troops. So he went almost unilaterally, with very little international support, to invade a country. They didn’t have a plan for the peace or for the occupation of Iraq.

My son was killed by Shiite insurgents. I believe George Bush created the insurgency by his failed policies and that’s why my son was killed.

BuzzFlash: Tell us a little bit about Casey. What kind of a young man was he? I know he was only 24 years old when he died.

Cindy Sheehan: He was an amazing person. He has been an altar server for 10 years. He finally quit when he graduated from high school and asked me, ”You know, Mom, can I quit altar serving? Can I be an usher or something now at Mass?“I was the coordinator of our youth Mass at our parish. And he was an Eagle Scout. He was a Eucharistic Minister, and he had trained to be a Eucharistic Minister in the field when they went to Iraq, to help the priest. But he was only there for two weeks before he was killed on Palm Sunday. He never missed Mass.

He had joined the Army because they promised him he could finish his college degree. He had already been going to college for three years before he joined the Army. My husband and I just went to Ft. Hood a couple weeks ago because the Catholic chapel he always went to was starting a new Knights of Columbus Council, and they decided to name it after Casey. It’s the Specialist Casey Austin Sheehan Knights of Columbus Council because they say that his love for his God, his church, his country and his family embodied what they want to stand for.

He was amazing. He was just the most calm and peaceful and gentle person that anybody would ever know. He was so quiet, but he had such an impact on everybody’s lives. And he was so brave. He saved American lives, but our question is, what are any of them doing there?

BuzzFlash: Casey, as I understand it, technically did not have to go to Iraq since he was a field mechanic. Is that correct?

Cindy Sheehan: He was a Humvee mechanic. He re-enlisted in August of 2003 because he didn’t want his buddies to do the job by themselves. It’s all about what they’re doing now — our soldiers are trying to keep themselves alive and trying to keep each other alive at this point right now.

BuzzFlash: When did Casey receive news that his unit was being sent to Iraq?

Cindy Sheehan: I think it was probably around last October, 2003, because they went to the National Training Center (NTC) at Ft. Irwin in the California desert in November. So we knew before he went to Ft. Irwin that they were going to be deployed sometime in March. Casey knew the First Cavalry was going to end up going to Iraq when he re-enlisted.

BuzzFlash: Did you have any correspondence with Casey while he was in Iraq before he was killed? Did he say or did you hear about what the situation was like on the ground?

Cindy Sheehan: He called me one time from Kuwait. They still hadn’t gone to Iraq. And he never complained. He said that it was hot and he was really busy because he had to get their vehicles ready to go on the convoy from Kuwait to Baghdad. He was on his way to Mass, and we talked about when he stopped in Ireland to refuel. We’re Irish, so he found an airport employee that was telling him about the history of our name, the Sheehan name.

He started writing us a letter on March 31st, because we didn’t know where we could send him mail or presents or supplies or anything yet. They didn’t tell them until they got to Saudi City where we could send them things. But he started writing us letters. And he said the convoy from Kuwait to Baghdad was real peaceful, and it looked like it was going to be an easy year of deployment. He wrote that on March 31st, and he was killed April 4th.

We never got the letter. It was in his things that we got from Baghdad. He didn’t even finish it.

BuzzFlash: President Bush told you, Casey, and every American, that we needed to invade Iraq to remove weapons of mass destruction — an assertion that, as you said, has proven to be a lie — and to fight terrorism, which is also untrue. When Casey left to go to Iraq, did the two of you talk about why you both felt that the United States was in Iraq, and what the United States was fighting for?

Cindy Sheehan: We didn’t understand why the United States was there. We never thought that Iraq was an imminent threat to the United States. But Casey told me, ”Mom, this is what we trained for. I’m ready. It’s my job. Because the sooner I get there, the sooner I’ll come home.“And he came home three weeks later in a flag-draped coffin.

BuzzFlash: Right now you, along with many other families who have lost loved ones in Iraq, are speaking out in various ways, part of which is a television ad criticizing Bush’s decision to mislead our country into a war. What made you decide to speak out, knowing the toll that it would take on you?

Cindy Sheehan: I have to. I can’t bring my son back. I can’t go back to April 3rd and bring Casey home. I can’t stand on the side while other mothers and families will have to go through what we’re going through. I have to speak out, and I have to help try to bring the troops home.

No matter who wins November 2 -–I hope it’s Kerry -–but no matter who wins, we have to hold them accountable. We have to start putting pressure on our elected officials to bring our troops home from the most unjust and mess of a war that our selected president has got us into.

BuzzFlash: Every month, there have been higher and higher American casualties.

Cindy Sheehan: Except for April, that was the highest. That’s the month my son was killed.

BuzzFlash: Right now, the situation is clearly deteriorating into a civil war. As a mom who’s lost a son in this war, how do you respond when you hear the president say that we need to stay the course in Iraq?

Cindy Sheehan: I respond: How can you stay a course that is so obviously not working? You’re going the wrong way. If you’re on a wrong course, you turn around and go the other way. He has betrayed us. He’s still betraying us, by telling us that everything is going well there. It’s shameful.

BuzzFlash: What would you say to President Bush if you could sit down in the same room and speak to him directly?

Cindy Sheehan: I actually got to meet face to face with the president. He called me ”Mom“ because he didn’t know my name, and he didn’t know my son’s name — he just knows that he’s meeting with these families that have lost loved ones. He said, ”Mom, I can’t imagine the pain you’re going through.“

I said, ”I think you can imagine it a little bit, Mr. President. You have daughters. How would you feel if one of them was killed?“

I told him, ”Trust me, Mr. President –- you don’t want to go there.“

He said, ”You’re right. I don’t."

BuzzFlash: Cindy, thank you so much for speaking with us.

Cindy Sheehan: Thank you.

A BUZZFLASH INTERVIEW

* * *

Resources:

RealVoices.org Web Site http://realvoices.org/rv/index.html Cindy Sheehan’s TV Ad Speaking Directly to George W. Bushhttp://realvoices.org/rv/cindy.html
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Re: Charles Carreon, The Arizona Kid

Postby admin » Thu Oct 03, 2013 9:38 pm

MULTIPLE GUNSHOT SUICIDES -- A NEW GUINNESS CATEGORY, by Charles Carreon

5:34 pm, August 14, 2005

This is a new category that is really blowing up these days — self-administration of multiple gunshots by a suicide. Guinness will of course require that you die to enter in this category. For a long time, there were no contestants, because most suicides are content to shoot themselves once in the head, and leave it at that, either departing instantly for the realms of their ancestors, or falling over with a brain injury that renders them incapable of further gunplay. Practice for this category includes practicing multiple trigger-pulls with a staccato beat, hoping in this way to kill, as it were, two birds with one stone — first, eliminating the likelihood of survival, and second, possibly carving a permanent place for oneself in the history books.

One of the first entrants in this category was Gary Webb, the author of Dark Alliance, the multiple-article expose in the Mercury Sun that exposed the Nicaraguan Contra rebels as the prime suppliers of the cocaine that fueled the crack cocaine epidemic of the '80s, and made Crips and Bloods heroes for all of our children. After telling friends that he was being shadowed by government agents who had tried to break into his apartment, he shot himself multiple times in the head. Here is the Sacramento Bee Obituary.

Obituary: Gary Webb, Prize-Winning Investigative Reporter
by Sam Stanton and Sandy Louey
Sacramento Bee Staff Writers
Published 2:15 am PST Sunday, December 12, 2004

Image
Gary Webb

Gary Webb, a prize-winning investigative journalist whose star-crossed career was capped with a controversial newspaper series linking the CIA to the crack cocaine epidemic in Los Angeles, died Friday of self-inflicted gunshot wounds, officials said.

Mr. Webb, 49, was found dead in his Carmichael home Friday morning of gunshot wounds to the head, the Sacramento County Coroner's Office said Saturday.

He left a note, but officials would not disclose its contents.

"I'm still in a state of shock," said Tom Dresslar, who works as a spokesman for California Attorney General Bill Lockyer and had known Mr. Webb for 15 years.

"He was a hard-core, no-fear investigative reporter," Dresslar said. "He wasn't afraid to stand up to whatever authority."

The two worked together when the Joint Legislative Audit Committee was investigating the Davis administration over the failed Oracle Corp. software contract.

Dresslar said Mr. Webb brought all the skills and tenacity that he had honed as an investigative reporter to his job as an investigator for the Assembly. "I was proud to work with him and call him a friend," Dresslar said.

Mr. Webb was divorced and had three children, according to Dresslar.

Most recently, Mr. Webb had been reporting for the Sacramento News & Review, covering politics and state government.

Mr. Webb had been working in the California Assembly speaker's Office of Member Services until February, when he was ousted after the new speaker, Fabian Núñez, took office.

Mr. Webb won more than 30 journalism awards in his career, which included stints with the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the San Jose Mercury News.

But it was Mr. Webb's tenure at the Mercury News from 1988 to 1997 that made his name in the business and eventually drove him from daily newspapers.

Mr. Webb, who was based in the newspaper's Sacramento bureau, authored a three-part investigative series in 1996 that linked the CIA to Nicaraguan Contras seeking to overthrow the Sandin ista government and to drug sales of crack cocaine flooding south-central Los Angeles in the 1980s.

The series, "Dark Alliances: The Story Behind the Crack Explosion," was controversial almost from the start.

Even as newspapers nationwide carried versions of Mr. Webb's reporting and congressional leaders called for investigations, the CIA director at the time visited Los Angeles for an unprecedented town hall meeting with area residents at which he denied the allegations and was met with loud jeers.

Three of the nation's leading newspapers, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post, followed up with reports questioning Mr. Webb's conclusions, and eventually his own newspaper turned on him.

In a letter to readers published in the Mercury News in May 1997, then-Executive Editor Jerry Ceppos told readers there had been problems with the series and that "we fell short at every step of our process - in the writing, editing and production of our work."

Within a month of that note's publication, Mr. Webb told the Washington Post that he had been pulled off the story, and his editors had told him they would not publish his follow-ups.

He also said he was fighting a transfer from the Sacramento bureau to a posting in Cupertino.

By then, however, his fate at the Mercury News was sealed, and he left the paper that year, eventually taking a job with the Assembly.

Mr. Webb later published a 548-page book based on his series, and in a 1998 interview with The Bee he said he still was befuddled over how he became notorious while the allegations in his stories were dismissed.

"That is an amazing phenomenon," he said. "I'm still not exactly sure how that happened."

About the writer: The Bee's Sam Stanton can be reached at (916) 321-1091 or sstanton@sacbee.com.


While Gary Webb's double-shot suicide has provoked some wild speculation that the Arkansas cops who investigated the case were not very bright, this kind of carping should not detract from Webb's remarkable feat. Nevertheless, while startling, a local Oregon housewife outdid him three years ago, before Webb's suicide was even a twinkle in his own eye.

In 2002, in our nearby burg of Central Point, Oregon, Kerry Repp, the wife of an Oregon State Police academy graduate blew the doors off Webb's record, shooting herself four times with her husband's pistol, while on the phone to 911, screaming her head off. The four bullets had entry points in the face, chin, neck and chest. What a pattern! This woman had the control, the style, that catapults a suicide to the top of the charts.

Of course, it is only great police work that can unearth the evidence necessary to sustain one of these awards. First, the cops must keep an open mind, like they did in the Kerry Repp case, not defaulting out to a conclusion of “murder” simply because it was unlikely that the dead person had shot themselves four times. After all, Sherlock Holmes said we eliminate “the impossible,” before concluding that “whatever remains must be the truth. And in this case, it was obviously not impossible for Kerry Repp to shoot herself four times. At least, it was less impossible than that her cop-husband, Gary Repp, had shot her four times. That was truly unbelievable, so of course there had to be another explanation. Since a skeptical public might easily jump to conclusions hearing about the four gunshots to the corpse, it's important for a police investigator to not blow these incendiary facts out of proportion, and thus the best course is that followed by Central Point Police Chief Mike Sweeny — just refuse to reveal these facts to the media.

Police probe shooting death
The pregnant Central Point woman died while her husband and two children were away
By BILL KETTLER
Mail Tribune

CENTRAL POINT - Police said Sunday they have no suspects in the shooting death of the pregnant wife of a National Guardsman who was scheduled to leave the Rogue Valley this week for duty overseas. Kerry Michelle Repp's body was found Saturday afternoon in their Central Point home, near Crater High School. Central Point Police Chief Mike Sweeny would not say where or how Repp, 29, had been shot. Her husband, Gary Marvin Repp Jr., 33, was scheduled to leave this week with the 186th Infantry Battalion of the Oregon Army National Guard for the Sinai Peninsula. The soldiers leave Thursday for Fort Carson, Colo., for two months of advanced training and will then spend six months in the Sinai Peninsula on peacekeeping duty.

Sweeny said Gary Repp and the couple's two children were away from home on a trip with other family members when the shooting occurred. Kerry Repp was about three months pregnant with the couple's third child. Sweeny said investigators still had not determined how the shooting happened. ”We haven't determined if there's even a crime at this time. We haven't been able to conclusively determine if it was a self-inflicted wound or if she was shot by another person.“

Gary Repp had just finished recruit school with the Oregon State Police and had been assigned to the Lakeview district, said state police Lt. Dan Durbin. He was being trained in the Rogue Valley because the Lakeview district did not have enough troopers to give him field training time. Gary Repp, a 1987 graduate of North Medford High School, and a 1990 graduate of Southern Oregon State College, also had worked as a Jackson County probation and parole officer and a Medford police officer.

Investigators came and went from the Repp's Hazel Avenue house Sunday evening as the search for evidence continued. An American flag and a black POW-MIA flag hung beside the garage, and petunias bloomed in a planter box. Durbin said Repp's National Guard orders would most likely be canceled. ”My intention is to contact his superiors (today) and see what his status is.“

Gary Repp is a captain in the battalion staff office, said Maj. Ron McKay, chaplain for the Guard unit. He oversees the unit's operations, but does not command troops in the field.

”The mission will go forward,“ McKay said. ”If he's not available to perform his duties, there'll be somebody else to step into his place.“ Sweeny said Jackson County's major assault and death investigation unit will pursue the case. The unit includes police officers from Medford, Ashland and Central Point, Oregon State Police, Jackson County Sheriff's Department, and the Jackson County District Attorney's office. ”It's fairly obvious that we're scrutinizing this even more extensively because (Gary Repp) was involved in the criminal justice community,“ Sweeny said. Reach reporter Bill Kettler at 776-4492, or e-mail bkettler@mailtribune.com


Because of my past work as a local prosecutor, I knew Mike Sweeny when he was a Medford Patrol Officer, and as far as I could tell he was not blind, nor was he particularly dim-witted. So I must conclude that something told this fine investigator that despite the four shots, there was something about the situation that clued him to the fact that, somehow, this woman had shot herself. Of course, sometimes this means bucking the medical evidence, but in pursuit of the truth, that has to be done:

Kerry Repp’s autopsy points to homicide
By SARAH LEMON
Mail Tribune

CENTRAL POINT — An autopsy revealed that a 29-year-old pregnant woman found dead in her home Saturday was the victim of a homicide — not suicide, as some had speculated. Her husband, Oregon State Police Trooper Gary Marvin Repp Jr., was the only ”person of interest“ police named Wednesday. ”The case is a homicide, and it’s very complex,“ said Central Point police Chief Mike Sweeny. ”It’s all circumstantial.“ Kerry Michele Repp was shot more than once with the handgun found near her body, according to Sweeny. Sweeny declined to discuss where on her body Kerry Repp was shot or exactly how many bullet wounds medical examiners found in the autopsy, completed late Tuesday. Gary Repp, a 32-year-old Oregon Army National Guard captain, was scheduled to leave today for training and then a six-month peacekeeping mission to Egypt. But police expect him to stay in town, Sweeny said. The National Guard had no official statement on Gary Repp’s status Wednesday, said Capt. Scott Granger at the Guard’s 1st Battalion, 186th Infantry Brigade headquarters in Ashland. Granger said he could not comment on whether Gary Repp would depart with other Guard troops. ”We’re looking at the best interests of the soldier right now and his family,“ Granger said. Sweeny said he understood that Gary Repp’s orders had been changed or that he was given an extension for his departure date. Police did not request a change in orders, Sweeny said. Neither Gary Repp nor members of his family would comment. Kerry Repp’s family would not discuss the case Wednesday. Her brother, 32-year-old Mike Johnson, said that police asked the family not to talk to reporters. A memorial service for Kerry Repp has been set for 3 p.m. Saturday at First Church of the Nazarene, 1974 E. McAndrews Road in Medford. Gary Repp graduated from the Oregon State Police Academy last month and trained for seven days at the regional headquarters office in Central Point. He officially is on leave without pay because he was called up for Guard duty in the course of his training, said OSP Lt. Dan Durbin. Gary Repp was scheduled to return to the OSP — assigned to the Lakeview District — after a nine-month service with the Guard, Durbin said. Repp is a former county and state probation officer who quit in December to become a police officer. In addition to Gary Repp, police were working either to eliminate or identify several other persons of interest as suspects in the case, Sweeny said. They declined to name any suspects in connection with the case Wednesday. ”We’re working on multiple people,“ Sweeny said. ”Everybody is still a possibility.“ Investigators were still wading through ”a mountain of physical evidence and statements“ Wednesday, Sweeny said. Kerry Repp’s father, Ron Johnson, found her dead in her Hazel Street home at about 1 p.m. Saturday. Gary Repp and the couple’s two children were at a T-ball game when the body was found, police said. Investigators initially were unsure whether the death was a suicide, accident or a homicide. Kerry Repp had filed for divorce last month from Gary Repp, her second husband. But the papers were never served, and the couple was living together trying to reconcile. Friends told police that the two had a rocky relationship, Sweeny said. Donations to an education fund for the Repp children can be made at any branch of U.S. Bank. Reach reporter Sarah Lemon at 776-4487, or e-mail slemon@mailtribune.com Copyright © 2002 Mail Tribune, Inc.


For a while, justice lost its course. Jackson County District Attorney, who was my boss about ten years ago, couldn't see past the ”obvious,“ and charged Gary Repp with the murder.

Repp arrested for wife's murder
Repp arrested for wife's murder He is taken into custody at the state police office, where he was being fired from his job as a trooper
By SARAH LEMON
Mail Tribune

Former state trooper Gary Marvin Repp Jr. was arrested Wednesday and charged with murdering his wife. A grand jury will hear the case Tuesday, said District Attorney Mark Huddleston. Gary Repp was arrested at 10:45 a.m. in the Oregon State Police regional headquarters in Central Point, where he was being terminated from his employment with OSP, said Central Point police Chief Mike Sweeny. ”We had sufficient probable cause, and it was agreed upon ... that this was the best time to make the arrest,“ Sweeny said. Gary Repp was the only ”person of interest“ police had named in the case, although there were several others who were not identified. Investigators eliminated all others who either had alibis or who could not have murdered Kerry Repp, Sweeny said. Gary Repp did not confess to murdering his wife, Sweeny added. OSP runs extensive background checks on all recruits and, based on its investigation, had no reason to believe that Gary Repp wasn't an ”excellent candidate“ for OSP, Lt. Dan Durbin said Wednesday. He stressed that Repp was to be a probationary employee for 18 months. His on-duty conduct would have been continuously monitored by a senior OSP trooper. ”We're not so naive to think that there aren't issues in a person's background that would manifest themselves," Durbin said. OSP hired Repp in December last year. He graduated from the Oregon State Police Recruit School on April 12. Gary Repp also is a captain in the Oregon Army National Guard and was scheduled to deploy with his battalion on a peace-keeping mission to Egypt last week. No word on his official status with the Guard was available Wednesday. Officials will release little information about the case before it goes to grand jury, Sweeny said. Details about the autopsy, physical evidence at the scene and the timeline of Kerry Repp's death all are key elements in the grand jury testimony and cannot be discussed beforehand, Sweeny said. Police said last week that Kerry Repp was shot more than once with a handgun found near her body. Police would not say how many times she had been shot or the location of the bullet wounds. Police searched the homes of Gary and Kerry Repp and Gary's brother, Lance Repp, who lives in the 1000 block of Ingrid Street in Medford. The warrants were sealed. Kerry Repp's graveside service - planned for Friday at Eagle Point National Cemetery Interment Shelter - was postponed Wednesday. Kerry Repp's body was released to her husband after last week's autopsy, police said. A new date for the service was not set. The Repps reportedly had a difficult relationship, and Kerry Repp had filed for divorce last month. However, she asked that the papers not be served, police said. The couple reportedly was living together trying to reconcile. Kerry Repp's family would not talk about the case Wednesday. Gary Repp's family declined comment. Reach reporter Sarah Lemon at 776-4487, or e-mail slemon@mailtribune.com.


Justice took a long time to get back on track, but thanks to the fact that other Oregon State Police Officers kept the faith, like Mike Barnett, writing from freegaryrepp@hotmail.com, ultimately, the truth was revealed. Gary, a father of two and a peacekeeper, was cleared of guilt, and Kerry's place in the record-books was made secure, perhaps forever. Here's what Mike Barnett said in his post at a whiney-cop website called http://www.guardroom.com, dredged out of Google cache, since the whiners closed down their bitch forum:

OSP Mike Barnett

Yes, there are many innocent people wrongly convicted of a crime every year. A very similar case is going on in Medford, Oregon right now. Gary Repp, a ”former“ State Police Officer, was arrested and charged with the murder of his wife. He was not at home at the time of the murder and there is absolutely NO evidence (physical, witnesses, otherwise) that link him to the crime. There is nothing at all, yet the police hold him in jail just because they can. His trial is set for May 2003, but it's very frightening to think that yet another innocent man could be sent to jail for life and possibly get the death penalty for a crime which the police KNOW HE DID NOT COMMIT. It is a shame with high quality people are falsley accused by the ”law“ in order to hide misconduct within the ”law". The system is out of order and needs to be changed. Posted by: M. Barnett (freegaryrepp@hotmail.com) on January 14, 2003 07:51 PM Google cache link


Yes, for a time poor Gary Repp sat in jail, and eventually had to stand trial before a jury of his peers, even though there was a suicide note, and even though his wife had sent an email to her hotmail account, logging in at Gary’s office at the Medford Armory, and the email said she was depressed. Even though some of Gary’s cop friends swore there was no way he could have killed Kerry and have gotten to the ball game without a drop of blood on him as quickly as he did. He had to stand trial.

February 5, 2004

Murder trial gets under way
By SARAH LEMON
Mail Tribune

While Gary Repp Jr. spent four months away from home training to be an Oregon State Police trooper, his wife told everyone how happy she was with him gone. While Kerry Michele Repp was going out to nightclubs and spending the couple’s money, her husband was learning how to protect and investigate crime scenes. While Kerry was having an affair with another man, conceiving his child, Repp was planning his strayed wife’s killing, said District Attorney Mark Huddleston. Prosecuting Repp for murder, Huddleston’s opening arguments Wednesday in Jackson County Circuit Court painted Repp, 35, as a cold-blooded killer who believed he could fool police with a staged death scene and fake suicide note. The crime would be carried out a week before Repp’s scheduled departure to Egypt with his Army National Guard unit. “On May 4, 2002, Gary Repp put (police) training to work, not to solve a crime but to commit one, Huddleston said. But Repp’s defense team portrayed their client as a victim of the very brotherhood to which he belonged. Botched police work led to Repp’s arrest, said defense attorney Jeni Feinberg. ”You will probably be shocked by the quality of this investigation,“ she told jurors. Attorneys for both sides will rely heavily on the timing of events that took place the Saturday morning when Kerry was found slain on her bed with Repp’s handgun in her right hand. A 9-1-1 call made from the Repp home at 8:23 a.m. will be key evidence for both the prosecution and defense. The call sounds like a woman screaming accompanied by several popping sounds, Huddleston said. Dispatchers disconnected that call when they didn’t get a response on the line. In violation of police protocol, the dispatcher did not send officers to the home. Kerry was alive when the call for help was made, but Repp and the children had already left the couple’s Hazel Street home in Central Point, Feinberg said. After taking the two boys to a Little League baseball field where Kerry’s oldest son was to have a team photo taken, Repp went to a campground where he had planned to meet his family for the weekend. Huddleston’s witnesses place Repp’s hurried appearance at the baseball field up to 15 minutes later than defense witnesses. The route from the Repp home to the baseball field on Hanley Road takes just 5 minutes by car, Huddleston said. Kerry’s absence that Saturday morning worried family and friends who had made plans with her the previous day. Repp said his wife was at home ”doing the pregnant thing.“ After numerous phone calls to the Repp home went unanswered, Kerry’s father, Ron Johnson, went to check on her at around 1 p.m. that afternoon. He found his 29-year-old daughter dead, her own blood soaking the plaid bed sheets and her light blue pajamas. She had been shot four times, in the head, chin, neck and chest. Etched in Kerry’s blood, a nearly invisible footprint links the crime to her husband, Huddleston said. Investigators discovered the impression of a bare foot, which appears to match Repp’s, halfway under the edge of the couple’s bed. Also found under the bed, the cordless phone used to dial 9-1-1 revealed Kerry’s blood and fragments of her teeth. However, not a speck of blood was seen on Repp when he left the couple’s home, Feinberg said. Not a trace of blood could be found on his clothing, shoes or wedding ring when police analyzed those items, she said. Detectives looked long and hard for any effort to show that the killer cleaned up in the Repp home, but that evidence just didn’t exist, she added. Kerry’s wedding ring was left on the kitchen counter along with a note to Repp apologizing for having hurt him. An e-mail suicide note sent at 8:15 a.m. from Kerry’s Hotmail e-mail account to her mother, JoeAnn Johnson, also was sent to Repp’s Hotmail account, Huddleston said. Although prosecutors have no direct evidence that Repp possessed the password for his wife’s e-mail account, a National Guard computer accessed both Repp’s and Kerry’s e-mail accounts the day before the murder. Details of the electronic message have yet to be revealed, but those who knew Kerry would say she didn’t compose the message, Huddleston said. The first witnesses to Kerry’s murder scene are expected to testify as the trial continues today in Medford. Reach reporter Sarah Lemon at 776-4487, or e-mail slemon@mailtribune.com You can find this story online at: http://www.mailtribune.com/archive/2004 ... 2local.htm Copyright © Mail Tribune, Inc. All rights reserved. February 7, 2004

Testimony heats up in Repp trial
By SARAH LEMON
Mail Tribune

Even if Kerry Repp could have warned police of her murder, 9-1-1 operators most likely wouldn’t have understood her cry for help. A shot to the back of the neck broke Repp’s jaw as she cradled telephone the morning of her May 4, 2002, murder, police said. The wound would have rendered Repp’s speech unintelligible, said forensic pathologist James Olson. A pillow held between the gun and Repp’s head muffled the shot. Investigators testifying Friday for prosecutors against accused murderer Gary Marvin Repp Jr. outlined the series of four gunshots that killed Kerry Repp in the bedroom of her Central Point home. The testimony was heard in Jackson County Circuit Court. Presenting an illustration of Kerry Repp at the time of her murder, prosecutors showed a woman sitting on the edge of a bed with a cordless telephone in her left hand, a gun aimed at a downward angle behind her head. Blood and pieces of bone and teeth were found on the phone’s mouthpiece. Emergency dispatchers got the call that Kerry Repp attempted to make at 8:23 a.m., but when no one answered, the operator disconnected the line. Officers were not sent to the house though they should have been, according to police protocol. The first shot to the back of Kerry Repp’s neck was followed by two others underneath her chin and below her chin in the center of her neck. The final gunshot to Kerry’s heart killed her, Olson said. One of the pillows found near the bed shows rips caused by the gun’s blast, Olson said. Forensic scientists said they caused similar rents in another pillowcase when test-firing the murder weapon. The evidence suggested the shooter placed a pillow between the gun and its target, Olson said. Using his knowledge of crime scenes, former Oregon State Police trainee Gary Marvin Repp Jr., set up his wife’s murder to look like a suicide, District Attorney Mark Huddleston has argued. However, recruits who attended OSP training camp with Repp described their study of crime scenes as basic. During the four-month session, which concluded about three weeks before Kerry Repp’s murder, recruits were instructed on how to scan a crime scene for suspects and secure it for further investigation, troopers said. An eight-hour course on latent fingerprints, particularly their presence on guns, was given, troopers said. Prosecutors noted that no fingerprints could be found at Kerry Repp’s murder scene. The killer could have worn gloves, investigators said. Prosecutors will present more evidence of fingerprints associated with Kerry Repp’s murder as the trial continues next week in Circuit Court. FBI officials who analyzed the May 4, 2002, 9-1-1 call also are expected to testify. Reach reporter Sarah Lemonat 776-4487, or e-mail slemon@mailtribune.com

February 11, 2004
Jurors learn of couple’s history
By SARAH LEMON
Mail Tribune

While accused murderer Gary Marvin Repp Jr. told police that he wanted to save his marriage, his wife apparently had different ideas. Prosecutors presented extensive audio and videotaped interviews between Repp and detectives during Tuesday’s continuing trial of the former Oregon State Police trooper, who is accused of killing his wife, Kerry. In the interviews, Repp gave lengthy accounts of his and his wife’s history, her alleged self-esteem issues and details of the week leading up to her death. Repp agreed to the interviews, conducted before his arrest, and before police told him his wife had been murdered. Kerry Repp was found shot to death in her bedroom on May 4, 2002. ”She didn’t think she was very pretty, but she was beautiful,“ Repp said of his wife in his first interview with police. Kerry Repp was a good wife and mother who kept the house clean, Repp said as he began to cry during the interview. Kerry worked numerous retail jobs and learned new sports with her husband, but she had confidence problems, he said. The couple had always had their problems, Repp said, but Kerry started to withdraw from him when she heard the family would be moving to Lakeview once he graduated from the OSP training academy. The couple also was awaiting his overseas deployment with his Oregon Army National Guard Unit. Due to leave about a week after the date of Kerry’s murder, Repp would be gone about a year. ”We had a lot of things hit us at the same time,“ Repp told detectives. Then Kerry Repp told her husband she had become pregnant with another man’s child. Repp admitted that the news hurt him, but said he didn’t believe in abortion and wanted to patch up the relationship. He eventually came to be excited about the baby’s birth, he said. Kerry, he said, vowed that she wanted nothing to do with the father of her baby. But friends and co-workers of Kerry Repp testified that she was never so happy as the week before her husband was to leave for Egypt with his National Guard unit. ”She had the biggest smile on her face. The smile actually went to her eyes,“ said friend Sheila Mapes, who worked with Kerry Repp at JC Penney. ”She was finally free.“ With the help of her father, Ron Johnson, Kerry Repp first consulted a divorce lawyer in March 2002. The divorce papers were filed in court a month later. But Repp, who had been at the OSP training academy from December 2001 to April 2002,was never notified. Serving her husband with divorce papers at the academy might have made him angry, Kerry told her attorney, James Mueller. ”She described Mr. Repp as a very controlling individual,“ Mueller said. Reach reporter Sarah Lemon at 776-4487, or e-mail slemon@mailtribune.com. You can find this story online at: http://www.mailtribune.com/archive/2004 ... 7local.htm Copyright © Mail Tribune, Inc. All rights reserved.


Well, eventually a jury saw the truth, but I can’t quote a local newspaper article on the topic, because I think the verdict struck the reporter speechless, or was for some other reason absented from the newspaper’s website. Fortunately, this letter to the editor made it clear that Gary Repp was in fact acquitted:

Jury not convinced
Letters regarding the Gary Repp murder trial show many opinions, but not a lot of knowledge.

One, from White City, calls the trial a ”rush to judgment,“ yet later says adjudication took two years. The same writer indicated his/her own feeling of reasonable doubt, yet calls the justice system (which exonerated Repp) ”criminal.“ I did not follow this trial so I won’t comment on the verdict. But I know a jury finding of ”not guilty" is not the same as being innocent. Not guilty simply means 12 carefully-selected people were not convinced. — M. Conens, Medford


Yes, I know the author of the letter, because it’s a small town, and Matt Conens used to be a cameraman for local TV. Well his opinion is his opinion, and you can’t unring the bell. Gary Repp’s reputation is ruined. Like Gary Repp’s fellow officer Mike Barnett said, it is a shame when an unfair shadow of blame is cast over a fine person who just had the bad luck to live with a suicide who just had to break all the records, and so here is the lesson. If you decide you want to try shooting yourself multiple times as a suicide stunt, you should videotape it, because otherwise you could get someone innocent in a lot of trouble, and you won’t be around to explain it. So go to the extra trouble, videotape yourself shooting yourself, and there won’t be any shadow of murder cast over your relatives, or any question about the nature of your achievement. For example, suppose you decided to empty an entire Uzi clip into your face – that might work, especially if you like jammed a stick between the trigger guard and the trigger. You might end up with thirty rounds in your mug, clearly dwarfing the achievements of past contestants like Kerry Repp. But without video evidence, who would believe it? So why skimp? You only die once, after all.
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Re: Charles Carreon, The Arizona Kid

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TEAM AMERICA? -- ONE SICK MOVIE!, by Charles Carreon

8:28 pm, August 21, 2005

I looked forward to watching “Team America,” a puppet-show satire of American foreign policy by “the makers of South Park,” even going so far as to actually watch the movie the same night I rented the DVD. Usually I’d rather read, and Tara pushes the movie agenda, but on this night, I had something I wanted to see. But having seen it, I must caution you to handle it with care, like a dead gopher your cat brought you. And please don’t leave this around kids. It’s loaded with sick ideas that are insidiously communicated using established techniques of subliminal persuasion. It doesn’t make much difference that puppets, rather than human actors, collapse in their own vomit, engage in sex that culminates with the girl shitting on the guy’s face, hack each other to bits, set others on fire, and are decapitated, detonated and impaled in the course of the movie. Indeed, the effect may be worse than seeing actors engaging in this stuff, because in that case, we’d just turn it off as “too violent.” But with puppets, they’ve got you off guard, and the traumatizing images stun the mind while explicit, implicit, and subliminal notions establish cross-currents of confusion, rendering you vulnerable to the really sick ideas that the creators of the movie want to disseminate.

By using puppets with large heads, about four times larger that a normal adult head, the puppeteers cause us to perceive the puppets as little babies, invoking our instinctive response to find them endearing. Mickey Mouse, Tweety Pie, and Joe Camel also exploit this hard-wired feature of human response to feel protective and emotive toward children. Such characters, that manifest child traits in adulthood, are called “neotenic.” “Neoteny is a term in developmental biology that describes the retention of juvenile characteristics in the adults of a species.” (Wikipedia entry for “neoteny.”) In simpler terms, these puppets are cute. “Cuteness is usually characterized by some combination of infant-like physical traits, especially small size, a large head, large eyes, a small nose, and chubby limbs. … Konrad Lorenz argued in 1950 that infantile features triggered nurturing responses in adults [citing as evidence] that humans react more positively to animals who look like infants — with big eyes, big heads, shortened noses, etc. — than to animals who are less cute. … Another way to phrase Lorenz's point is to say that humans prefer animals which exhibit neoteny.” (Wikipedia entry for “Cuteness.”) It’s traumatic when creatures that we find endearing and worthy of protection are blown up, dismembered, splattered, and burned before our eyes.

However, if we are already laughing when this happens, we may tend to keep laughing even as it happens, telling ourselves that, after all they are just puppets, and it’s all just in good fun. Right, like simulated child pornography would be fun. No, the violence in this film is really pornographic because it is so mean-spiritedly directed at movie-industry peace activists. It’s not actually funny, or in any way connected to reality, to depict Alec Baldwin, Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins, Sean Penn, and Helen Hunt, as murderous terrorists who will kill to establish world peace. It’s demented to depict Michael Moore, smeared with mustard, waving a hot-dog, a slice of pizza, detonating himself in a suicide bombing of Mt. Rushmore. It’s tasteless and disgusting to splatter an effigy of Holly Hunter into a bloody mess, to decapitate Samuel Jackson, and split Alec Baldwin’s braincase open to expose the contents, and to repeat the image three times. Serial imagery of extreme death and mutilation of the brain cavity? How hilarious! Sure they’re just puppets. But if you found a puppet of you hanging from a rope in your front yard, you wouldn’t just think it was a puppet. It would be a threat. This movie is an assault on each of those individuals, an expression of mortal hatred elaborated with millions of dollars of effort to deliver a personal insult and an explicit threat. Shut up, or we’ll kill you.

There is nothing to recommend this movie, and life is too short to spend on a movie like this when you could be doing something really worthwhile, like petting your dog, picking your nose, or breaking wind. The thesis of the movie is far too banal and degrading to be worthy of my recounting. While digital ink may cost next to nothing, your time and mine are worth something. My suggestion is to boycott anything the South Park hoodlums produce. Put these shitbags out of business and send them back to the Home for Retarded Republicans who actually are such nerds they think they’re cool. And for a minute they had me thinking it, too. Until I realized the joke was on me.

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