Category: Crimes

Shoot Me I Agree with James Sensenbrenner

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He is calling for James Clapper to be prosecuted for lying to Congress:

Rep. James Sensenbrenner Jr., the original author of the Patriot Act, says Director of National Intelligence James Clapper should be prosecuted for lying to Congress.

“Lying to Congress is a federal offense, and Clapper ought to be fired and prosecuted for it,” the Wisconsin Republican said in an interview with The Hill.

He said the Justice Department should prosecute Clapper for giving false testimony during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing in March.

During that hearing, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) asked Clapper whether the National Security Agency (NSA) collects data on millions of Americans. Clapper insisted that the NSA does not — or at least does “not wittingly” — collect information on Americans in bulk.

After documents leaked by Edward Snowden revealed that the NSA collects records on virtually all U.S. phone calls, Clapper apologized for the misleading comment.

The intelligence director said he tried to give the “least untruthful” answer he could without revealing classified information.

Sensenbrenner said that explanation doesn’t hold water and argued the courts and Congress depend on accurate testimony to do their jobs.

“The only way laws are effective is if they’re enforced,” Sensenbrenner said. “If it’s a criminal offense — and I believe Mr. Clapper has committed a criminal offense — then the Justice Department ought to do its job.”

He’s right.

This was clearly a case of perjury, particularly since he got the questions in advance as well as being given the opportunity to clarify.

Even if there is not a case for his being prosecuted (there is), his behavior clearly justifies the removal of his security clearance.

It’s not going to happen under this administration, though.

I Hope That This Will Result in Consequences

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Pope Francis has established a commission to investigate sex abuse committed by agents of the church:

In his first concrete step to address the clerical sexual-abuse problem in the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Francis will establish a commission to advise him on protecting children from pedophile priests and on how to counsel victims, the Vatican said Thursday.

The announcement was a forthright acknowledgment by the Vatican of the enduring problem of abusive priests, and fit with Francis’ pattern of willingness to set a new tone in the governance of the church nine months into his tenure.

Whether the new commission portends a significant change in how the Vatican deals with abusive priests and their protectors remains to be seen, experts on the church said. Yet the timing of the announcement, two days after a United Nations panel criticized the Vatican over its handling of abuse cases, suggested that the pope and his closest advisers wanted to at least be seen as tackling the issue with greater firmness.

Soon after he became pope, Francis directed the Vatican last April to act decisively on abuse cases and punish pedophile priests, in a meeting with subordinates at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the church’s enforcement arm. But he had said little about the sexual abuse problem since.

“Francis is great on a lot of stuff but hasn’t really done anything about sex abuse cases,” said John L. Allen Jr., the senior correspondent for The National Catholic Reporter, an American weekly, who frequently reports from the Vatican.

“A lot of people most focused on this issue said that Francis needs to game up,” Mr. Allen said in a telephone interview. “So the P.R. thing to say was, ‘We’re doing something.’ ”

The announcement elicited a mixed reaction, reflecting some skepticism, particularly among victims and their advocates, over whether a new commission would be more than cosmetic.

That is the question.

There are two questions here, one of accountability, and one of transparency.

I am inclined to believe that the we will see some accountability, that the people who are most culpable will be removed from positions of authority, but I am less predisposed to believe that we will see a public accounting.

That is simply not a part of the Catholic Church’s DNA.

Your Moment of Kafka

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There was a crazy guy in New York City’s Times Square, one Glenn Broadnax, who was wandering into traffic.

Why is this news?  After all, crazy people interfering with traffic is not particularly newsworthy in Manhattan.

Well it becomes news because, police shot at him while trying to apprehend him, and missed, striking innocent bystanders.

Because of this the prosecutor charged Mr. Broadnax with assault ……… for getting shot at:

An unarmed, emotionally disturbed man shot at by the police as he was lurching around traffic near Times Square in September has been charged with assault, on the theory that he was responsible for bullet wounds suffered by two bystanders, according to an indictment unsealed in State Supreme Court in Manhattan on Wednesday.

The man, Glenn Broadnax, 35, of Brooklyn, created a disturbance on Sept. 14, wading into traffic at 42nd Street and Eighth Avenue and throwing himself into the path of oncoming cars.

A curious crowd grew. Police officers arrived and tried to corral Mr. Broadnax, a 250-pound man. When he reached into his pants pocket, two officers, who, the police said, thought he was pulling a gun, opened fire, missing Mr. Broadnax, but hitting two nearby women. Finally, a police sergeant knocked Mr. Broadnax down with a Taser.

The shootings once again raised questions about the police use of firearms in crowded areas and drew comparisons to a shooting a year ago, when officers struck nine bystanders in front of the Empire State Building when they killed an armed murder suspect.

Initially Mr. Broadnax was arrested on misdemeanor charges of menacing, drug possession and resisting arrest. But the Manhattan district attorney’s office persuaded a grand jury to charge Mr. Broadnax with assault, a felony carrying a maximum sentence of 25 years. Specifically, the nine-count indictment unsealed on Wednesday said Mr. Broadnax “recklessly engaged in conduct which created a grave risk of death.”

“The defendant is the one that created the situation that injured innocent bystanders,” said an assistant district attorney, Shannon Lucey.

You are charging a clearly disturbed man with felony assault for somehow “forcing” to fire recklessly firing into a crowded area?

What the f%$#?

And the White House is on the Wrong Side of the Drug War Internationally

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We have a leaked document from UN negotiations on how to deal with illegal drugs, and the United States has decided to advocate for the Military-Prison-Industrial complex instead of sanity:

Major international divisions over the global “war on drugs” have been revealed in a leaked draft of a UN document setting out the organisation’s long-term strategy for combating illicit narcotics.

The draft, written in September and seen by the Observer, shows there are serious and entrenched divisions over the longstanding US-led policy promoting prohibition as an exclusive solution to the problem.

Instead, a number of countries are pushing for the “war on drugs” to be seen in a different light, which places greater emphasis on treating drug consumption as a public health problem, rather than a criminal justice matter.

It is rare for such a document to leak. Normally only the final agreed version is published once all differences between UN member states have been removed.

The divisions highlighted in the draft are potentially important. The document will form the basis of a joint “high-level” statement on drugs to be published in the spring, setting out the UN’s thinking. This will then pave the way for a general assembly review, an event that occurs every 10 years, and, in 2016, will confirm the UN’s position for the next decade. “The idea that there is a global consensus on drugs policy is fake,” said Damon Barrett, deputy director of the charity Harm Reduction International. “The differences have been there for a long time, but you rarely get to see them. It all gets whittled down to the lowest common denominator, when all you see is agreement. But it’s interesting to see now what they are arguing about.”

The current review, taking place in Vienna at the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs, comes after South American countries threw down the gauntlet to the US at this year’s Organization of American States summit meeting, when they argued that alternatives to prohibition must be considered.

 The problem here is that the “war on drugs” has been demagogued in the United States for decades, and when juxtaposed with the aggressive lobbying of private prisons and the US Military (which gets a cut of the border protection action) have made it next to impossible.

Or at least it is impossible for politicians unwilling to take a political risk to do the right thing.

Why Internet Rage is a Good Thing

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Because with out it, these people would have gotten away with trying to cover up a rape to protect their high school football program, but instead, the Steubenville school superintendent, a principal, and two coaches have been indicted.

This is in addition to the indictment of an IT guy at the school district about 6 weeks ago.

This would not have happened but for if not for the sh%$-storm on the internet, and the bravery of Alexandria Goddard for getting it out there and staying on the story.

This Might Even Be a Worse Public-Private Partnership than the Chicago Parking Deal………

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You arrogant ass. You’ve killed us!

In this case, it appears that Fukushima Daiichi cleanup is being run by the Yakusa.

Yes, various Japanese organized crime syndicates are running the labor force:

The complexity of Fukushima contracts and the shortage of workers have played into the hands of the yakuza, Japan’s organized crime syndicates, which have run labor rackets for generations.

 Nearly 50 gangs with 1,050 members operate in Fukushima prefecture dominated by three major syndicates – Yamaguchi-gumi, Sumiyoshi-kai and Inagawa-kai, police say.

 Ministries, the companies involved in the decontamination and decommissioning work, and police have set up a task force to eradicate organized crime from the nuclear clean-up project. Police investigators say they cannot crack down on the gang members they track without receiving a complaint. They also rely on major contractors for information.

 In a rare prosecution involving a yakuza executive, Yoshinori Arai, a boss in a gang affiliated with the Sumiyoshi-kai, was convicted of labor law violations. Arai admitted pocketing around $60,000 over two years by skimming a third of wages paid to workers in the disaster zone. In March a judge gave him an eight-month suspended sentence because Arai said he had resigned from the gang and regretted his actions.

 Arai was convicted of supplying workers to a site managed by Obayashi, one of Japan’s leading contractors, in Date, a town northwest of the Fukushima plant. Date was in the path of the most concentrated plume of radiation after the disaster.

 A police official with knowledge of the investigation said Arai’s case was just “the tip of the iceberg” in terms of organized crime involvement in the clean-up.

 A spokesman for Obayashi said the company “did not notice” that one of its subcontractors was getting workers from a gangster.

 “In contracts with our subcontractors we have clauses on not cooperating with organized crime,” the spokesman said, adding the company was working with the police and its subcontractors to ensure this sort of violation does not happen again.

I am so glad that I live on the Atlantic roast.

H/t Americablog.

Schwer zu Sein a Yid*

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It appears that some folks from my wife’s old home town have been up to no good:

In Brooklyn’s ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods, Mendel Epstein made a name for himself as the rabbi to see for women struggling to divorce their husbands. Among the Orthodox, a divorce requires the husband’s permission, known as a “get,” and tales abound of women whose husbands refuse to consent.

While it’s common for rabbis to take action against defiant husbands, such as barring them from synagogue life, Rabbi Epstein, 68, took matters much further, according to the authorities.

For hefty fees, he orchestrated the kidnapping and torture of reluctant husbands, charging their wives as much as $10,000 for a rabbinical decree permitting violence and $50,000 to hire others to carry out the deed, according to federal charges unsealed on Thursday morning.

Rabbi Epstein, along with another rabbi, Martin Wolmark, who is the head of a yeshiva, as well as several men in what the authorities called the “kidnap team,” appeared in Federal District Court in Trenton after a sting operation in which an undercover federal agent posed as an Orthodox Jewish woman soliciting Rabbi Epstein’s services.

………

When two undercover F.B.I. agents — one posing as a woman seeking a divorce, the other as her brother — asked a rabbi for help, the rabbi explained how Rabbi Epstein might be able to assist them.

“You need special rabbis who are going to take this thing and see it through to the end,” Rabbi Martin Wolmark, a respected figure who presides over a yeshiva in Monsey, N.Y., said in a recorded telephone call on Aug. 7. He described Rabbi Epstein as “a hired hand” who could help, according to the criminal complaint in the case.

When the undercover agents met with Rabbi Epstein a week later, he said that he was confident he could secure a get once his “tough guys” had made their threats.

(emphasis mine)

Women who are trapped by this are called Agunot, (literally “Chained Women”) and their plight is heart-breaking, but these guys are not trying to help, they are drying to make bank of these women’s pain.

Some of the alleged kidnappers come from My wife’s old neighborhood.

She spent much of her time growing up in Rockland county, just over the line from Monsey.

Who knew that she was in an area that was mobbed up?

*It’s hard to be a Jew.  This is so embarrassing.

Just When You Thought that the American Military Could Not Get Any Worse on Rape in the Military

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We have a the convening authority allowing cross examination that would not be out of place in a Taliban court:

Earlier this month, the U.S. Naval Academy held a hearing into allegations that three of its football players had sexually assaulted a female midshipman. The alleged victim was a 20-year-old sophomore in April 2012 when she attended an off-campus “toga and yoga” party, drank heavily, and had alleged sexual contact with the three men while being allegedly too intoxicated to give consent. That’s a lot of “allegedlys,” but if true, the midshipman’s tale is a worn, familiar one—especially in the military, where a recent Defense Department report found that an estimated 26,000 service members experienced some form of sexual assault last year, up from 19,000 two years before. Of those incidents, 3,000 were reported; only 302 went to trial. As details from this latest hearing leak out, it’s easy to see why so many victims might prefer to disappear rather than face the punishing interrogations and institutional pressures that come with speaking up.

The woman, now 21, spent more than 20 hours on the stand, requesting several times to be excused from testifying because of exhaustion. Though, according to newspaper accounts, she said repeatedly that her memory of the night was fuzzy (she came to believe she’d been raped after she heard rumors and saw posts about her on social media), the defense lawyers pounced on discrepancies in her story as evidence of instability and deceit. They grilled her on her mental health. They inquired whether she wore a bra or underwear at the party. They quizzed her relentlessly about her oral sex technique, including how wide she opened her mouth. (Why? Because, as the New York Times reports, “oral sex would indicate the ‘active participation’ of the woman and therefore consent,” according to one of the player’s lawyers.) They asked, the paper of record continues, “whether she had apologized to another midshipman with whom she’d had intercourse for ‘being a ho.’ ”

This is shameful. And it makes an excellent case for Sen. Kirsten E. Gillibrand’s bill to remove sexual assault trials from the military chain of command, prosecuting them in civilian courts instead. Supporters of the Gillibrand proposal cite the web of conflicting loyalties between the accused, the accuser, and the judges as one reason that the current system is failing to protect victims. They argue that authorities’ first allegiance may be to the military’s reputation—that the bias is to acquit. But here’s an even simpler reason to make the switch: Civilian courts don’t allow the kind of abusive questioning described above. Lawyers in civilian courts are prohibited (or at least strongly discouraged) from asking an alleged assault victim about her sexual history. Judges in civilian courts would probably break their gavels admonishing a counsel who wanted to know how wide a woman opened her mouth for oral sex.

This is truly obscene.

I’d go further than Gillibrand, and put this in Federal Court, removing it completely from the jurisdiction of the military, because it is clear that they cannot be trusted with this.

As the Germans once said of the British, “They fight like lions, but they are led by asses.”

It appears that the same could apply to our officer corps, at least with regard to their morality.

Jeebus.

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How the hell does someone shoot their way into the Washington Navy Yard?

Seriously, it’s a secure area, and NCIS Protective Operations Field Office the folks who, manage “Protection details on six DoD/DoN High Risk Personal (HRP).”

What the heck is going on here.

Unlike the cable channels, I won’t speculate on what is going on. I know nothing.

About my only insight on this, and it reflects very poorly on me, is that when things like this happen, I notice how easy my commute home is.

It’s my strongest memory of 911 too.

My mind is odd.

Fracking Assholes Literally Think That They are Above the Law

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And no, I am not invoking Battlestar Galactica.

I am referring to the hissy fit that drillers in Pennsylvania are having about being prosecuted for illegal dumping:

Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane’s decision to prosecute a major Marcellus Shale natural-gas driller for a 2010 wastewater spill has sent shock waves through the industry.

But environmentalists Wednesday hailed the prosecution of the Exxon Mobil Corp. subsidiary as a departure from the soft treatment they say the industry has received from Pennsylvania regulators.

………

Kane’s office announced charges Tuesday against XTO Energy Inc. for discharging more than 50,000 gallons of toxic wastewater from storage tanks at a gas-well site in Lycoming County.

XTO in July settled federal civil charges over the incident by agreeing to pay a $100,000 fine and deploy a plan to improve wastewater-management practices. The consent decree included no admissions of liability.

The Fort Worth, Texas, drilling company, which Exxon acquired in 2010, said it had worked cooperatively with federal and state authorities to clean up the spilled waste, known as “produced water.” XTO excavated and removed 3,000 tons of contaminated soil from the site.

“Criminal charges are unwarranted and legally baseless because neither XTO nor any of its employees intentionally, recklessly, or negligently discharged produced water on the site,” XTO said in a statement.

Kane’s office said it did not need to prove intent to prosecute the company for crimes. XTO is charged with five counts of unlawful conduct under the Clean Streams Law and three counts of unlawful conduct under the Solid Waste Management Act.

Industry leaders said the prosecution of a company for what they called an inadvertent spill creates a hostile business environment.

Because prosecuting criminals is constitutes a “hostile business environment.”

YOU see, laws are only for the little people.

The official story from XTO also stinks to high heaven:

The XTO spill received very little public attention when it occurred.

A DEP inspector discovered wastewater leaking from an open valve on a storage tank during an unannounced visit to the Marquardt well site on Nov. 16, 2010. The wastewater spilled into a tributary of the Susquehanna River and also contaminated a spring. Pollutants were present in the stream for 65 days after the spill.

The grand jury’s presentment does not say who opened the valves on the tank or why. XTO officials at the time suggested vandals might be responsible. But it noted that the drilling site had no secondary containment, little security, and no alarm system for leaks.

Yes, “vandals”.

It’s gotta be vandals, and not some corporate drone who decided that it made business sense to just dump the water, even if every now and again you get caught and have to pay a 100 Grand fine.

A tip of the hat, to Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane.

The Final word on George Zimmerman, Care of Alex Fraser

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Dear George Zimmerman,

For the rest of your life you are now going to feel what its like to be a black man in America.

You will feel people stare at you. Judging you for what you think are unfair reasons. You will lose out on getting jobs for something you feel is outside of your control. You will believe yourself to be an upstanding citizen and wonder why people choose to not see that.

People will cross the street when they see you coming. They will call you hurtful names. It will drive you so insane some days that you’ll want to scream at the top of your lungs. But you will have to wake up the next day, put on firm look and push through life.

I bet you never thought that by shooting a black male you’d end up inheriting all of his struggles.

Enjoy your “freedom.”

Sincerely,

A black male who could’ve been Trayvon Martin

From his Facebook page.

Yes, James Clapper Perjured Himself Before Congress, and Should Be Both Fired and Prosecuted

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Fred Kaplan, who tends to be a font of conventional wisdom, is calling for Director of National Intelligence James Clapper to be fired:

If President Obama really does welcome a debate about the scope of the U.S. surveillance program, a good first step would be to fire Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.

 Back at an open congressional hearing on March 12, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) asked Clapper, “Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?” Clapper replied, “No sir … not wittingly.” As we all now know, he was lying.

 We also now know that Clapper knew he was lying. In an interview with NBC’s Andrea Mitchell that aired this past Sunday, Clapper was asked why he answered Wyden the way he did. He replied:

“I thought, though in retrospect, I was asked [a] ‘when are you going to … stop beating your wife’ kind of question, which is … not answerable necessarily by a simple yes or no. So I responded in what I thought was the most truthful, or least untruthful, manner by saying, ‘No.’ ”

Let’s parse this passage. As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Wyden had been briefed on the top-secret-plus programs that we now all know about. That is, he knew that he was putting Clapper in a box; He knew that the true answer to his question was “Yes,” but he also knew that Clapper would have a hard time saying so without making headlines.

There were actually some non-answer answers he could have given that didn’t rise to the level of lying to Congress, saying something like, “No one is perfect, but we do our best not to infringe on the privacy of the American public,” but he just perjured himself, and he did so because he simply did not did not care about telling the truth under oath.

FWIW, is obliquely saying the Clapper lied through his teeth as well:

Ron Wyden, a Democratic member of the Senate intelligence committee, revealed that he had given Clapper, the director of national intelligence, a day’s advance notice of a question about the extent of government surveillance at a congressional hearing in March.

 Clapper said earlier this week that he had misunderstood the question. When asked directly by Wyden in March whether the NSA was collecting any kind of data on “millions” of Americans, Clapper replied “no” and “not wittingly” – a claim undermined by the Guardian’s disclosures about NSA collection of millions of Americans’ phone records. Wyden also disclosed that he had given Clapper an opportunity in private to revise his answer, after the session.

 “One of the most important responsibilities a senator has is oversight of the intelligence community. This job cannot be done responsibly if senators aren’t getting straight answers to direct questions,” Wyden said in a Tuesday statement.

(emphasis mine)

Note that this makes this even worse, because Clapper did not just lie off the cuff. He was given 24 hours to come up with an appropriate answer, and then he was given the opportunity to revise his answer, and he just lied, because he knew that there would be absolutely no consequences for this.

With Barack Obama in the White House, and Eric Holder as Attorney General, he is probably right, but the statute of limitations is 5 years, so a new AG could file charges between January 2017 and May of 2018.

It won’t happen, but I can dream.

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

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The leader of the Anonymous group that acquired (pinched) much of the data used to prosecute the Steubenville football player rapists, has been raided by the FBI:

In April, the FBI quietly [His description is, “12 F.B.I. Swat Team agents jumped out of the truck screaming for me to “Get The F%$# Down” with m-16 assault rifles and full riot gear armed safety off, pointed directly at my head.” This is a definition of “quietly” I was previously unaware of] raided the home of the hacker known as KYAnonymous in connection with his role in the Steubenville rape case. Today he spoke out for the first time about the raid, his true identity, and his motivations for pursuing the Steubenville rapists, in an extensive interview with Mother Jones.

 “The goal of the media interviews is to get the entire nation to say ‘fuck you’ to these guys,” said KYAnonymous, whose real name is Deric Lostutter. He was referring to the federal agents who raided his home in Winchester, Kentucky, and carted off his computers and XBox.

 Lostutter may deserve more credit than anyone for turning Steubenville into a national outrage. After a 16-year-old girl was raped by two members of the Steubenville High football team last year, he obtained and published tweets and Instagram photos in which other team members had joked about the incident and belittled the victim. He now admits to being the man behind the mask in a video posted by another hacker on the team’s fan page, RollRedRoll.com, where he threatened action against the players unless they apologized to the girl. (The rapists were convicted in March.)

He is facing more jail time than the rapists.

This is nuts, between the SWAT style raid, and the excessive nature of the possible sentences.

This lack of proportionality is a feature, and not a bug. Hyper-aggressive policing and sentencing has intimidation (and guilty pleas) as a goal.

Elvis (Impersonator) Has Left the Building

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It’s now official. Paul Kevin Curtis, the Elvis impersonator originally accused of being the Mississippi ricin mailer, has been exonerated, and Wayne Newton impersonator James Everett Dutschke has been indicted:

A federal grand jury has indicted a Mississippi man suspected of sending poison-laced letters to President Barack Obama and other officials, according to an indictment made public Monday.

The 5-count indictment charges 41-year-old James Everett Dutschke (pronounced DUHS’-kee) with developing, producing and stockpiling the poison ricin, threatening the president and others and attempting to impede the investigation.

………

George Lucas, an attorney for Dutschke, said he had not yet seen the indictment and had no immediate comment.

Dutschke is the second person to face charges in the case.

Paul Kevin Curtis, a 45-year-old Elvis impersonator, was arrested on April 17, but the charges were dropped six days later.

So yes, the Wayne Newton impersonator attempted to frame the Elvis impersonator, and he got caught, and now his lawyer, George F%$#ing Lucas is waiting for the details.

This is beyond the wildest dreams of the writers for The Daily Show or The Onion.

Background here.

Gee, Another Case Where the Chain of Command Does the Wrong Thing When Sexual Assault is Alleged

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In this case, it’s the Naval Academy in Annapolis:

Three football players at the U.S. Naval Academy are under investigation in an alleged sex assault involving a female midshipmen almost a year ago, according to a Defense Department official.

 According to the official, the three midshipmen were first accused by her at the time of the alleged incident, but she dropped her complaint a few months after the incident. She then made a complaint again earlier this year, and the investigation is now underway by the Navy. The alleged victim’s lawyer, Susan Burke, said her client has participated in wiretapping as part of the investigation at the request of NCIS.

Normally, I would not be sure if this is a military thing, or if it is a sports thing, but reading this:

In a statement to CNN, attorney Susan Burke said the woman went to an off-campus party at a “football house” in April 2012 and became intoxicated, and woke up there the next morning “with little recall” of what occurred.

 “She learned from social media and from friends that three football players had claimed to have had sexual intercourse with her while incapacitated,” Burke said.

 She reported the incident to Navy authorities and explained that she could not provide much information because she had been intoxicated, Burke said.

 Burke said the woman was disciplined for drinking and the case was closed without further action by the academy.

Leads me to believe that the problem here is not sports culture, but military culture.

At this point that non only does sexual assault need to be moved out of the chain of command under the UCMJ, but every crime not directly related to military operations and discipline needs to be moved out of the chain of command.

Another Day, Another Army Sex Scandal………

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A brigadier general in charge of Army Training Center and Fort Jackson:

The Army announced it has suspended the commander of Fort Jackson, S.C., amid misconduct allegations that include adultery and a physical altercation, according to a spokesman for Training and Doctrine Command.

Brig. Gen. Bryan T. Roberts was suspended today as commander of the Army Training Center and Fort Jackson by TRADOC commander Gen. Robert W. Cone, based on a preliminary investigation by Army Criminal Investigation Command. The investigation pointed to a breach of good order and discipline, “which was contrary to Army values and could not be condoned,” said spokesman Harvey Perritt.

This is not a problem that can be handled internally.

Explain to me again why we need to keep sexual offenses prosecution in the military chain of command under the UCMJ?

The Only People Having a Worse Week than the Obama Administration

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The Pentagon.

Where they have yet another soldier in charge of a sexual assault prevention office accused of sexual assault, and this time, we have an super-sized the accusations of rape with an accusation of pimping!

An Army sergeant who served as a sexual assault prevention and response coordinator at Fort Hood, Tex., is under investigation for allegations of pandering, abusive sexual contact, assault and maltreatment of subordinates, Pentagon officials said late Tuesday.

………

The noncommissioned officer under investigation had been working as an “equal opportunity adviser and sexual harassment/assault response and prevention program coordinator” with a battalion of troops — about 2,000 soldiers — assigned to the Army’s III Corps at Fort Hood when the allegations surfaced, the Pentagon said in a statement.

The suspect was not identified by name. One official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because no charges have been filed, said the portion of the inquiry related to pandering refers to allegations that the soldier was involved in managing a prostitution operation, perhaps involving a subordinate.

Un-dirty-word believable.

I’m beginning to think the whole  “Convening Authority” structure of military justice, where the commanding officer has unlimited authority to decide whether or not to file charges, and can over the ruling of a court martial, needs to be rethought, and not just for cases of sexual assault.

And the Award for Institutional Corruption In an African Institution Goes To………

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The Catholic Diocese of Uganda which has suspended a priest for reporting child rape:

He is a celebrity across eastern and central Africa, a gospel music star known to many as the “Dancing Priest.” But for years he also was a keeper of painful secrets — his own and many others’.

In going public, Anthony Musaala has forced the Roman Catholic Church in Uganda to confront a problem it had insisted didn’t exist. And he may stir a debate far beyond Africa’s most Catholic of countries.

The Ugandan priest has been suspended indefinitely by the archbishop of Kampala for exposing what he calls an open secret: Sex abuse in the Catholic Church is a problem in Africa as well as in Western Europe and North America.

The African Catholic Church is fast-growing, pious and traditional. As the church elsewhere forks out billions of dollars to compensate the child sex abuse victims of priests, few African Catholics have questioned the assumption, voiced recently by Ghanaian Cardinal Peter Turkson, that the African church is purer than its counterpart in the West, which is regarded as secular and permissive.

It’s not more pure, says Musaala. He says he has the evidence to prove it.

“The Vatican turns a blind eye because it doesn’t want to be embarrassed about this blooming church. But I think it’s time we had the truth,” Musaala says.

In March, he wrote to the archbishop of Kampala, Cyprian Lwanga, about priests who fathered children, kept secret wives or abused girls or boys, and called for a debate on marriage for priests.

One of the cases of abuse he cited involved himself. He was one of numerous boys sexually abused at 16, he says, by Catholic brothers at one of Uganda’s best boarding schools. He also alleged several other cases of child sex abuse in his letter.

“Wherever you go, people know about this. It’s like an open secret. People know. Nothing is ever done,” said Musaala in an interview.

The letter was leaked to the news media. And in response, Lwanga suspended Musaala, saying his statements stirred up contempt for the Catholic Church and damaged the morale of believers.

Later in the month, Lwanga acknowledged that abuses had taken place, apologized to victims and set up an internal inquiry. But he did not backtrack on Musaala’s unpaid suspension.

Lwanga’s limited concession came after South African Cardinal Wilfrid Napier of Durban said in a BBC interview that he had dealt with cases of child sex abuse, which were handled by the church internally, and not referred to the police. He suggested that the perpetrators weren’t criminals and needed counseling.

………

Indeed, after Musaala’s letter became public, a Catholic government minister close to the archbishop advised him to apologize. “He said, ‘You spent a lot of time in England and you have been here for 17 years, but you’ve never quite understood the kind of environment in which we live here,'” Musaala said in a telephone interview. “‘And the kind of things you are trying to say just do not fit well in this kind of environment.'”

As John Aravosis eloquently states, “If the Vatican doesn’t intervene and reinstate Anthony Musaala, we’ll know all we need to know about the new Pope.”

Not The Onion

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The head of the US Airforce’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Branch has been arrested on sexual assault charges:

A key point in last year’s Academy Award nominated documentary “The Invisible War” was that the military was structurally incapable of adequately policing sexual assault in the armed services. As if to bolster the filmmakers’ case, the Air Force officer in charge of its Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Branch has been arrested and charged with sexual battery.

“The DoD estimates that, on average, there are more than 50 sexual assaults involving military personnel each day. The only thing unusual about this particular assault is that the accused was actually arrested and charged, and that senior officers in his chain of command cannot intervene to prevent his prosecution,” Kirby Dick, the director of “The Invisible War,” told CQ Roll Call. His film’s key tenet is that the military does not follow standard criminal justice procedures in sexual assault cases, keeping them within the chain of command, and that this has helped lead to an epidemic of sexual assault in the armed forces.

Lt. Col. Jeff Krusinski was arrested by Arlington County, Va., police on Sunday in a Crystal City, Va., parking lot, as first reported by ARLnow. According to the police report “a drunken male subject approached a female victim in a parking lot and grabbed her breasts and buttocks. The victim fought the suspect off as he attempted to touch her again and alerted police.” Krusinski was arrested, charged and held on a $5,000 unsecured bond.

I am not particularly surprised.

The US military has long history of (at best) indifference to issues of sexual assault, as evidenced by the recent spate of get out of jail free cards issued by senior officers.

This is Not the Onion

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You know that guy who is alleged to have mailed ricin laced letters to Obama and Congresscritters?

Wanna guess what his day job is?

He was an Elvis impersonator:

An Elvis impersonator named Paul Kevin Curtis who lives in Corinth Mississippi was charged Thursday for allegedly sending ricin-tainted letters to President Barack Obama, Sen. Roger Wiker (R-MS), and a judge in Lee County Mississippi. Court documents released by the Department of Justice show Curtis was charged with one count of sending a letter “containing threats to take the life of or to inflict bodily harm upon the president of the United States” and a count of sending a letter “containing a threat to injure the person of others.”

We are living in very strange times.