HBO Special Reviews Clarence Thomas vs Anita Hill

The biggest failure by the Democrat Party since passing the Civil Rights Act and earning the black vote was the confirmation of Clarence Thomas. In a bow to conservative racism, President George HW Bush nominated Thomas – and lost any possible confidence and ability to attract black votes for the next 40 years. Of course Republicans are whimpering at the retelling of events, because they know they stole one from the Yellowback Donkeys.

Anita Hill in 2013

 

HBO’s ‘Confirmation’ sparks conservative backlash even before its debut

HBO’s dramatic retelling of Anita Hill’s allegations of sexual harassment against Justice Clarence Thomas at his Supreme Court confirmation hearings in 1991 doesn’t debut until Saturday, butconservative critics have already come out in full force to discredit it.

Although Kerry Washington, the film’s star and executive producer, has claimed that the goal of the film is not to declare “winners and losers” in their politically and racially charged clash, supporters of Thomas have criticized the television movie as an attempt to rewrite history to serve a liberal agenda.

“Anita Hill looks good, Clarence Thomas looks bad, and the rest of us look like bumbling idiots,” former Sen. Alan Simpson recently told The Hollywood Reporter.

In a separate interview, former Sen. Jack Danforth told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that “The script that they sent me is just totally wrong. It’s a hybrid of fact and absolute make-believe.”

The band of cowards included Joe Biden and Ted Kennedy

The most vociferous opponent of the film has been Mark Paoletta, an attorney and veteran of the George H. W. Bush White House who worked to shepherd Thomas’ nomination through the U.S. Senate. He considers the justice a “good friend.” Paoletta has been making the media rounds decrying “Confirmation”  — although he has yet to see the finished film, he obtained what he believes to be a “late draft” of the screenplay — and he has even launched a website dedicated to debunking its assertions: confirmationbiased.com.

“What I’m interested in is bringing out the facts that I don’t think are represented in this movie and then people can make their own decisions and they can look at my background and draw their own conclusions,” Paoletta told MSNBC on Friday. “This movie in my view leaves out a lot of the troubling testimony that showed that Anita Hill’s story didn’t add up.”

Among the issues Paoletta has raised is what he considers the film’s lack of emphasis on alleged inconsistencies in Hill’s testimony, as well as the fact that, despite her accusations of sexual harassment, she stayed in contact with Thomas and continued to work with him a second place of employment (The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission)l He also claims it misrepresents how and when she shared her story with the Senate and FBI investigators, and what he calls its “ludicrous” portrayal of a second Thomas accuser, Angela Wright, who did not testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1991, for reasons which remain in dispute…

The segment does concede that when Thomas’ hearings concluded, the public overwhelmingly believed his version of the events by a margin of 47 to 24 percent among registered voters, according to a NBC News/Wall St. Journal poll. (Some polls placed the margin wider at 60 percent to 20 percent.) But it also points out that just a year later, sympathies in that same survey swung back Hill’s way by a 44 to 34 percent margin.

“A lot of people initially were put off by her coming forward. It was hard to listen to what she said. It was gross,” Mark Crispin Miller, a professor at Johns Hopkins University, told The Baltimore Sun in 1994. “But that initial feeling of revulsion has passed. People now have thought about it and realized women don’t have to take this anymore.”

Other facts may have also swayed Americans to believe her: One of Hill’s most prominent antagonists, author David Brock, later retracted his attacks on her, and others have since come forward tocorroborate elements of Hill’s account. In addition, Hill reportedly passed a polygraph test amid the hearings and a hagiographical documentary on Hill was released in 2014. Thomas’ very conservative bent and relative silence on the court has also infuriated many progressives….Read the Full Article Here…

 

 

 

Texas Cops Attack Dad, Then Lie About Arrest to Charge Him

Next time you get into a discussion with one of those conservative anti BLM types…Show them this video. It is likely the only reason the Texas prosecutor threw the charges out is the victim this time was white.

Here is hoping Mr Faulkenberry has a decent lawyer, and he is the one collecting $800,000.

WATCH: Video clears man accused by Texas cops of assaulting them resulting in bail set at $800,000

A Texas man who had his hands up, only to be leg-whipped and thrown to the ground by sheriff’s deputies, said he escaped years in prison after a prosecutor threw out all the charges after viewing surveillance video of the incident.

In an interview with Ars Technica, Larry Faulkenberry, 47, said he told the deputies he had a camera that captured the events the evening of Jan. 14, 2015 when he was taken into custody and wrestled to the ground by three Caldwell County sheriff’s deputies.

“I knew the camera system was capturing everything the entire time. It knew everything that happened,” Faulkenberry explained. “I told him, ‘You just messed up. You have no idea how bad.’ He told me to ‘shut up.’”

The officers were dispatched to  Faulkenberry’s home after his 16-year-old son called in a false report that his father was drunk and waving a firearm because the teenager was mad that his dad had grounded him.

In the video, Faulkenberry can be seen with his hands up the entire time as the three officers surround him, with one suddenly leg-whipping him, driving him to the ground where all three can be seen piling on him.

According to the police report filed by Deputy Michael Taylor, “I observed Lawrence Faulkenberry push Sergeant Yost with the left side of his body and elbow into a tree causing him to fall and injure his left shin and right knee cap. I observed Lawrence Faulkenberry to forcefully resist Deputies while attempting to lawfully detain him for officer safety. Deputies detained Lawrence Faulkenberry using the least amount of force necessary to gain compliance from Lawrence Faulkenberry.”

The video showed nothing of the sort happened.

After seeing the video, Caldwell County District Attorney Fred Weber dropped charges against Faulkenberry who had already spent ten days in jail and was held on $807,000 bail.

“Without the video I would be in prison. There is no doubt about that,” Faulkenberry said.

Weber did not indicate whether the three officers would be prosecuted for filing a false report.

 

Sandra Bland Arresting Officer Fired for Perjury

Been a long time coming – but the officer who turned a simple traffic infraction into locking up Sandra Bland has been fired for lying about why he arrested her.

Texas formally fires trooper who arrested Sandra Bland

Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw has formally fired Brian Encinia, the trooper who arrested Sandra Bland, the agency announced Wednesday.

In the letter of final termination, McCraw said Tuesday: “I have carefully considered all the points raised by you in our meeting on February 5, 2016. I have determined that you have not rebutted the charges set out in the statement of charges of January 28, 2016. No cause has been presented to alter my preliminary decision. Therefore, it is now my decision that you be discharged from the Texas Department of Public Safety effective at 5:00 p.m., upon the date you receive this letter, pursuant to the authority vested in me by Section 411.007, Government Code.”

Encinia signed the letter Wednesday morning.

Encinia stopped Bland near the Prairie View A&M University campus on July 10, 2015 for failing to properly signal a lane change. After a heated argument, the trooper arrested Bland for assaulting a public servant. Bland was found hanged in her Waller County jail cell three days later. Her death has been ruled a suicide.

A Waller County grand jury indicted Encinia in January after concluding there was evidence he lied about the circumstances under which Bland exited her car. If convicted of the misdemeanor perjury charge, Encinia could face up to a year in jail and a $4,000 fine. His case will be heard in the 506th District Court in Waller County.

McCraw announced the day of the indictment that he would begin termination proceedings. Encinia has 15 days to appeal McCraw’s decision to the Public Safety Commission, which oversees DPS.

Encinia attorney Larkin Eakin Jr. said his client will appeal the director’s decision.

 

No Police Accountability in Philadelphia Either

One o the things conservatives constantly squeal about is taxes. They prefer to shut down public schools to find the money from which to do so – even though there is a more sensible solution. Out of control Policing is costing major cities huge amounts of money. Chicago alone has paid over half a billion dollars in settlements because of police misbehavior over the last 10 years, with settlements in 2013 topping $85 million. Los Angeles, which has a similar-sized police force, paid out $20 million in brutality-related legal claims last year, less than a quarter of Chicago’s outlay. Baltimore has spent $5 million a year since 2011. And then there is Philadelphia…

Logically it would seem conservatives would be in alignment with BLM and other organizations seeking better, less-corrupt, and accountable police. It is not only good for the community, it is good for the bottom line. But then, common sense never got in the way of racism.

How Philadelphia prosecutors protect police misconduct: Cops get caught lying — and then get off the hook

In Philadelphia, widespread allegations of corruption and perjury against members of the nation’s fourth largest police department have in recent years shaken the criminal justice system.

Currently, the Defender Association of Philadelphia is seeking to have more than 500 convictions involving Officer Christopher Hulmes reopened and tossed out. In 2011, Hulmes admitted to lying in open court in a drug-and-gun case against two black men who claim they were framed. He did so in front of a judge and prosecutor. But he was not charged with perjury until this April, in the wake of reporting by this reporter when he was employed at the now-defunct Philadelphia City Paper.

Worse yet, police and prosecutors had failed to address prior evidence that Hulmes was a liar.

In 2008, an Assistant District Attorney reported that Hulmes had admitted that he had lied about where police had discovered a gun, allegedly to benefit a defendant who had provided him useful information. The prosecutor reported the lying. But the police internal affairs unit failed to sustain the charges. The District Attorney’s Office likewise apparently did nothing. And so, despite one serious allegation of lying and a separate admission of perjury, officials in the D.A.’s Office did nothing to stop him: Hulmes continued to make narcotics arrests on the street, and prosecutors kept putting him on the stand to testify. And now, many of his cases, meritorious or otherwise, will very likely be thrown out.

In recent weeks, Salon has been reporting on police lying in Chicago, where false statements underpin a culture that protects everything from physical abuse to illegal searches. But reviewing cases from around the country show that Chicago is far from alone.

Brad Bridge, an expert in police misconduct at the Philadelphia public defender, says that it may take a while to reopen Hulmes’ old cases: First, they have to deal with 1,300-odd petitions seeking to reopen convictions related to six allegedly rogue narcotics officers who, earlier this year, beat federal charges that they rampantly abused and robbed drug dealers.

“Police perjury has a corrosive effect upon the entire judicial system,” emails Bridge. “This has happened in Philadelphia where over 600 convictions had to have been vacated over the past two years where significant doubts have arisen about the truthfulness of the police officers involved.”

There is little evidence that D.A. Seth Williams Office, the Police Department and the city do much to root out police perjury.

The city discusses civil rights cases with the Police Department, says Chief Deputy City Solicitor Craig Straw, who handles civil rights cases against officers. But neither the Police Department nor the city’s understaffed Police Advisory Commission could point to any proactive measures that are taken to tackle perjury. D.A. Williams’ Office has long hostile to reform despite hopes that he would usher in progressive change, and is currently enmeshed in salacious political controversies. His office did not respond to a request to explain its program to tackle police lying.

In the recent past, even overwhelming video evidence that police were lying wasn’t enough to convince Philadelphia prosecutors. In 2010, the extraordinarily brutal police beating of Askia Sabur on a West Philadelphia sidewalk went viral on YouTube. Prosecutors nonetheless charged Sabur, who remained jailed awaiting trial, with assaulting the officer. Police claimed that Sabur had beaten an officer with his baton and reached for his gun—an allegation that was not supported by video evidence. A jury finally acquitted Sabur, but there were never any charges filed against the officer, Jimmy Leocal, who had beaten him most viciously.

“Unfortunately, in some situations even when prosecutors have very good reason to disbelieve the police officer,” they still put him up to testify, says University of Pennsylvania law professor and leading civil rights attorney David Rudovsky. “But the larger problem, I think, is just the uncritical acceptance of what the police say…In a culture in which most people think police tell the truth…the natural reaction of many people is to believe the officer.”

Williams’ prosecutors long took a similarly hands-off approach to lying in the Philadelphia Prison System. Last year, City Paper reported that guard Tyrone Glover was accused of assaulting two inmates. In both cases, however, the inmates were charged in connection with assaulting Glover. In one case, however, City Paper obtained video evidence showing Glover assaulting the inmate….Read More Here…

 

Inglewood, Ca Police Shoot 2 Innocent Black Men…Plant Evidence

Yet another case of Police shooting innocent, unarmed men – then planting guns and “stolen merchandise” to cover it up. This time in Inglewood California, part of greater Los Angeles. Even worse – the dirty Cops then charged the victims with murder, when a Police vehicle rushing to the scene ran over a pedestrian.

Two Innocent Black Men Shot By Police, Then Falsely Accused Of Murder

The alleged murder victim was actually hit and killed by a police vehicle.

An Inglewood police officer shot down two innocent and unarmed men, without warning or questions and without identifying himself, the men say in Federal Court.

Thirty-five-year-old Robert Pickett, of Los Angeles, and Darryl Lewis, 39, of Gardena, say they spent the day grilling burgers with friends and were picking up some dumbbells and checking on one of Pickett’s cousins after midnight on May 24, 2011, when Officer Mike Bolliger pulled up and came out shooting.

Pickett says Bollinger “parked his car at the corner, got out armed with his shotgun cocked, loaded and ready to fire” and shot them.

“No questions asked, no weapons seen, no words offered or exchanged. Defendant Bollinger blasted three shotgun rounds at the hapless and unarmed plaintiffs, striking them and wounding them as they sought to take cover from assault, leaving them in critical condition, bleeding face-down on the ground,” Pickett says in the Dec. 3 complaint.

The men say Bollinger was responding with no partner or backup to a report of a home invasion robbery by two black men who might be armed with handguns, at the apartment complex where Pickett’s cousin lived. The “sketchy information” about the robbers said only that they were black men, according to the complaint. Lewis stood by the security gate at the front of the apartment complex, smoking a cigarette, while Pickett punched in the pass code and said he was going to see his cousin.

Then, “Without warning, without investigation, without knowledge of who was in the area, of who the suspects were or what they looked like, and in violation of all training and standard police protocol, [Bollinger] approached the apartment gate and immediately shot Mr. Lewis and Mr. Pickett,” the complaint states.

Pickett, a handyman who has a son and was engaged to be married at the time, suffered seven gunshot wounds, including one to his head.

Lewis, a husband and father of four, was shot once in the back and three times in the legs.

After other officers arrived and handcuffed them, the men say, “It became apparent that the wrong men had been shot as a result of Bolliger’s rash, reckless and life-endangering conduct.”

Though they lay bleeding and handcuffed, “in critical condition,” the men say, the officers “set out to cover up the shooting of these two innocent, unarmed men.”

To top it off, they say, “While driving with reckless abandon to the scene, they ran over a pedestrian, in a cross walk, killing her.”

Pickett and Lewis sued four other officers, in addition to Bolliger and the city.

The cover-up was a bogus story that Lewis and/or Pickett had pointed guns at Bolliger, according to the complaint. “The problem for defendant Bolliger and the rest of defendant police officers was that neither plaintiff was armed; neither possessed a weapon of any kind. Likewise, neither plaintiff was in possession of any of the stolen items supposedly taken by the suspect in the robbery,” the complaint states.

Nor did the people who reported the home invasion identify them as the robbers, the men say. They claim that the first photos taken of the scene where they were shot “do not show any weapon nor any of the stolen items. Some of the responding officers to the scene failed to see any weapons purportedly belonging to either plaintiff. Somehow, however, two handguns appeared and stolen items appeared as well. It was determined by subsequent forensic analysis before plaintiffs’ criminal trial, that neither plaintiff was in any way connected physically with the weapons or the items.”

The men say it took nearly an hour for them to receive medical attention, and that when paramedics did arrive, “Bolliger refused to let them tend to the critically wounded plaintiffs.”

Pickett says Bolliger told him that “he did not give a f*** that he had shot him in the head.”

Bollinger and the other officers staged a crime scene to conform to their story, arrested them on false charges, including murder of the pedestrian killed by the police car, attempted murder of Bollinger, and carrying loaded firearms, according to the complaint.

The officers also “conducted tainted six-pack lineups in an effort to get the purported robbery victims to identify (them),” falsified reports and gave false testimony against them, the men say.

Pickett and Lewis say they spent a year in jail awaiting trial and throughout a jury trial that started in December 2013 and eventually exonerated them.

They seek punitive damages for civil rights violations, unreasonable and excessive force, false arrest, malicious prosecution, and failure to intervene, train, supervise and discipline.

Also named as defendants are Inglewood police Officers Navid Khansari, Joe Lisardi, Michael Han and Jack Aranda.

 

More on that Alabama Police Department Planting Evidence to Falsely Convict Black Men

A group of 11 Dothan Alabama Police systematically planted drugs and guns on innocent black suspects for nearly 20 year in a conspiracy by a white supremacist group of officers. At least 1,000 –  and possibly more young black men were falsely convicted.

 

Zimmerman Wife Charged With Perjury

Things are not looking good for George…

Now his wife has joined him at being charged with a crime.

George Zimmerman’s wife charged with perjury

Authorities say the wife of Trayvon Martin’s shooter is being accused of lying to a judge about their finances during his bond hearing and faces one count of perjury.

An order issued Tuesday by assistant state attorney John Guy charged Shellie Zimmerman for knowingly making false statements during the April hearing. George Zimmerman has pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder in the shooting. He was granted $150,000 bond at that hearing and released.

The judge revoked that bond earlier this month after state attorneys argued that both Zimmerman and his wife had lied to the judge about their finances, especially about money raised from a website.

George Zimmerman is back in jail.