Remembering Ka'Sandra Wade

A Pittsburgh woman was buried this week leaving behind an 11-year-old son. She was a victim of domestic abuse. She had finally, seemingly broken free of the terror of her ex-boyfriend. She had moved out and was about to start a new job in the new year at the place were she had been an intern for nine months. Before that could happen, she was murdered by her former partner. She was 33 years old.

Her name was Ka'Sandra Wade.

People often ask why woman stay with someone who abuses them. Well, Ka'Sandra's story illustrates one reason why: Leaving can be dangerous. According to a United States Department of Justice National Crime Victim Survey, the most dangerous time for a woman who is being abused is when she tries to leave.

Ka'Sandra had people trying to help her, including at her job. Tragically, when she reached out to police one last time, the system failed her.

She called 911 in the waning hours of last year. She requested that police come to her home, but then the 911 operator heard a commotion and the call went dead.

Two officers responded. They were denied entrance by a man (her ex) who spoke out of a window saying no police were needed. They spoke for some ten minutes to the man and then left the scene. They left without ever speaking to the woman who placed the call even though, "The officers ... knew the caller was female. They knew the woman was calm at first. They were told that there was some sort of commotion. And they knew the line had been disconnected."

When Ka'Sandra's mother called police the next day, concerned that she hadn't heard from her daughter, police went back to her home. They found her shot dead.

What followed next was a standoff at the ex-partner's apartment. Her murderer eventually killed himself -- but not before telling the police that they could have saved her the day previous. It is unknown whether or not she was killed before the police arrived the day before or shortly thereafter as it's impossible to pinpoint a time of death quite so precisely.

What is known is that the Pittsburgh Police 'do not have a specific policy on how officers should handle “unknown trouble” calls such as the one at the center of a murder-suicide investigation.'

Can we all agree that they should have policies in place? Can we all agree that there was a breakdown in the system that was supposed to protect her and all of us?

To make matters worse, when the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette had emailed questions (the required format) to the police to break this story, they were not only met with resistance, something quite extraordinary happened:

Diane Richard, the department’s public information officer, tipped other news organizations off to the P-G’s investigation when she sent the release to about 200 journalists.  

Post-Gazette executive editor David Shribman tells Romenesko readers:  

“This is probably unprecedented and certainly unprofessional. It is a horrifying, disrespectful departure from every interchange I have had, or been witness to, with public-relations professionals in four decades in journalism.” 

The Board of Ethics and Professional Standards at the Public Relations Society of America is looking into the matter, PRSA’s Arthur Yann tells me.

Chris Potter of the Pittsburgh City Paper adds:

I've been in this business for more than 15 years, and have never seen anything quite like this. And if the idea was to somehow dissuade the P-G from working the story, well ... clearly it didn't work.

Clearly, we have not heard the last of this -- nor should we.

In the meantime, there are ways that you can help.

There will be a vigil for Ka'Sandra Wade tomorrow:

ACTION United Vigil for Ka'Sandra Wade
When: Saturday , Januray 12 2013, 4:00 PM
Where: 5907 Penn Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15206
What: Vigil Announcement: ACTION United and Pgh Women will hold a Vigil in Memory of Ka'Sandra Wade on Saturday, January 12, 2013. We will meet at 5907 Penn Avenue on the 3rd floor, at 4:00 PM, and hold a Solemn Procession to Eastminster Presbyterian Church. There will be a Potluck Repast, so please bring something to share if you can. A collection will be taken up for the trust fund we are setting up for her son. Womens Organizations should bring their banners or signs...There will be an opportunity to sign up for our Campaign for Ka'Sandra's Law Please RSVP and SHARE!
RSVP: Facebook (or just show up)

There will also be an online vigil tomorrow. Please click here for more information and to get a button for your blog/Facebook page/etc., like the one on the sidebar of our blog.

You can also find information and resources on domestic abuse from the Women's Center & Shelter of Pittsburgh and The Center for Victims.

Also from Pittsburgh Lesbian Correspondents (who initiated the cyber vigil):

Finally, we ask that you mention that a fund has been set up for Zaire, Ka’Sandra’s son – donations can be sent to made payable to Sharon Jordan to this address: Sharon Jordan, c/o ACTION United, 5907 Penn Ave, Suite 300, Pittsburgh, PA 15206. Sharon is Ka’Sandra’s mother and she is now raising Zaire. The family may have other needs – please contact ACTION United if you would like to help. The number is 412-567-7275.

Tracking Teh Crazie - Jerome Corsi. Again.

The wingnut birther conspiracy continues.

From Jerome Corsi at WND (of course):

NEW YORK – John Brennan, the Obama counter-terrorism adviser nominated this week to head the CIA, played a controversial role in what many suspect was an effort to sanitize Obama’s passport records.

On March 21, 2008, amid Obama’s first presidential campaign, two unnamed contract employees for the State Department were fired and a third was disciplined for breaching the passport file of Democratic presidential candidate and then-Sen. Barack Obama.

Breaking the story, the Washington Times on March 20, 2008, noted that all three had used their authorized computer network access to look up and read Obama’s records within the State Department consular affairs section that “possesses and stores passport information.”

And the connection to Brennan?  Take a look:

The New York Times noted the two offending State Department contract employees who were fired had worked for Stanley Inc., a company based in Arlington, Va., while the reprimanded worker continued to be employed by the Analysis Corporation of McLean, Va.

The newspaper gave no background on either corporation, other than to note that Stanley Inc. did “computer work for the government.”

At that time, Stanley Inc. was a 3,500-person technology firm that had just won a $570-million contract to provide computer-related passport services to the State Department.

Analysis Corporation was headed by Brennan, a former CIA agent who was then serving as an adviser on intelligence and foreign policy to Sen. Obama’s presidential campaign.

And since Brennan's "connected" to the intrusion it didn't take much for Corsi to paste in a conspiracy:

Investigative reporter Kenneth Timmerman said a well-placed but unnamed source told him that the real point of the passport breach incidents was to cauterize the Obama file, removing from it any information that could prove damaging to his eligibility to be president.

Information like Obama's birthplace, of course.  Two things you should know about the source of Corsi's scoop above - it's Newsmax and it's from January of 2009 about events that took place almost a year earlier.  Was there any sort of investigation in to this?  Is any of it even possible?  Corsi, gives us a clue:

In July 2008, the State Department’s Office of Inspector General issued a 104-page investigative report on the passport breach incidents, stamped “Sensitive But Unclassified.” The report was so heavily redacted, it was virtually useless to the public. Scores of passages were blacked out entirely, including one sequence of 29 consecutive pages that were each obliterated by a solid black box that made it impossible even to determine paragraph structures.

You can read the "virtually useless" report here. From the Executive Summary we learn:

In March 2008, media reports surfaced that the passport files maintained by the Department of State (Department) of three U.S. Senators, who were also presidential candidates, had been improperly accessed by Department employees and contract staff. On March 21, 2008, following the first reported breach and at the direction of the Acting Inspector General, the Office of Inspector General (OIG), Office of Audits, initiated this limited review of Bureau of Consular Affairs (CA) controls over access to passport records in the Department’s Passport Information Electronic Records System (PIERS). Specifically, this review focused on determining whether the Department (1) adequately protects passport records and data contained in PIERS from unauthorized access and (2) responds effectively when incidents of unauthorized access occur.

So the unauthorized access was through the PIERS system. Now we're getting somewhere.  But can anyone actually do what Corsi says these low level data entry employees did?

Not really.  From page ten of the OIG report:

According to CA [Consular Affairs] officials, almost all PIERS users have “read only” access.

There's a foot note to that sentence which reads:

A small number of CA Directorate Staff can edit PIERS records as required by their positions.

So as it's only those State Department employees on the "CA Directorate Staff" who can edit (which, presumably would include "sanitize" or "cauterize") passport records and as the "connection" between Brennan and the snooping wasn't a State Department employee, Jerome Corsi's thesis (that Brennan "sanitized" Obama's passport records to cover up the "fact" that he was born in Kenya) is virtually useless.

But let's assume it's true.  It would be illegal, right?  But if that's the case then why would this happen?

Still, the New York Times report indicated then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had spent Friday morning calling all three presidential candidates and that she had told Obama that she was sorry for the violation.

“I told him that I myself would be very disturbed if I learned that somebody had looked into my passport file,” Rice said.

If Corsi is right, then Rice must've been in on it - if only to cover it up. Jerome Corsi - he's got teh crazie.

Tracking Teh Crazie - 22nd Amendment

I've seen this pop up in a few places and so I am assuming you have, too.

Here's teh crazie from la maison de crazie, WND:

Before President Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected to his third and fourth terms in office, U.S. presidents had honored the limit established by George Washington that a president should serve no more than two.

And after, the 22nd Amendment formally restricted service in the Oval Office to two terms.

But now, U.S. Rep. Jose Serrano, D-N.Y., and a supporter of President Obama, has introduced House Joint Resolution 15 to repeal the 22nd Amendment and thus abolish presidential term limits.

The title of the piece, incidentally, is:

Democrat plan lets Obama run for 3rd term

So we all know it's a "Democrat" plot to "let" Obama rule for another 4 years - can't trust them lib'ruls, can you?  Can't trust 'em not to change the Constitution to suit their radical socialist agenda, can you?

Except this is not the first time Serrano has introduced this.  Nor is he the only one.  Indeed, there's a whole mess of details that WND left out.  Let's start with their very next paragraph:

Serrano has attempted this before, in 2003, 2009 and 2011 with little luck. H.J.R. 15 would require a two-thirds majority vote in favor in both the House and Senate and a majority of support from state legislatures.

Actually, according to snopes.com:

Rep. Serrano has introduced the very same proposal to Congress every two years since 1997 (a total of nine times), regardless of which party was currently occupying the White House...[Emphasis added.]

That's two resolutions for Clinton the philanderer, four for Bush the torturer, and now three for Obama, the guy who's letting Bush get away with the torture.

But I digress.

Here's the text of Serrano's resolution:

JOINT RESOLUTION
Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to repeal the twenty-second article of amendment, thereby removing the limitation on the number of terms an individual may serve as President.

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled (two-thirds of each House concurring therein), That the following article is proposed as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which shall be valid to all intents and purposes as part of the Constitution when ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years after the date of its submission for ratification:

‘Article--
   ‘The twenty-second article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.’. [Italics and Bolding in original.]

Did you know the current leaders in the Senate (McConnell and Reid) co-sponsored a very similar bill in 1995?  Word for word similar.

Did you know who said this?

...in thinking about it more and more, I have come to the conclusion that the 22nd Amendment was a mistake.

This person was also quoted as wondering whether the 22nd Amendment interferes with "the democratic rights of the people" Adding:

They can elect a Senator for 40 years or a Congressman—something of this kind—for as long as they want to. Why don't they have the right to vote for whoever they want to vote for?

Do you know who said that? That would be the 40th President of these United States, Ronald Wilson Reagan. And do you know when he said that?  You'd think, considering the frame teh crazie wants you to use, that it was when the Gipper was a Democrat.

You could think that, but you'd be wrong.

He said both those things in 1986 - during his second administration.  The first in an interview with Barbara Walters and the second during an interview with the Washington Post.

So yea, Serrano's resolution is a Democrat Plan to let Obama rule some more.

Tracking Teh Crazie.

Jack Kelly Sunday

In this week's column in the Post-Gazette, columnist Jack Kelly comes to the conclusion:

But if we want to prevent future Newtowns, the facts must matter to us.

Too bad his own definition of "facts" and how they "matter" doesn't exactly correspond to everyone else's.

For example, Jack writes about a particular crime reporter of the New York Times:

Every year or so for nearly a decade, Fox Butterfield of The New York Times has written a story puzzling over what to him was a paradox: As the rate of violent crime went down, the prison population went up.

And then a few paragraphs later:

It never seemed to occur to Mr. Butterfield that crime went down because more criminals were being locked up. But at least he acknowledged the facts, and puzzled over them.

Now take a look at what Butterfield actually wrote in 2004. In the New York Times. While writing about the rise of the prison population/decline in the crime rate "paradox":

The number of inmates in state and federal prisons rose 2.1 percent last year, even as violent crime and property crime fell, according to a study by the Justice Department released yesterday.

The continuing increase in the prison population, despite a drop or leveling off in the crime rate in the past few years, is a result of laws passed in the 1990's that led to more prison sentences and longer terms, said Allen J. Beck, chief of corrections statistics for the department's Bureau of Justice Statistics and an author of the report.

Yea, he's puzzled.  But there's more here.  Unlike Jack, Butterfield looks deeper into what's going on.  Here's what he wrote in 1997:

Of course, the huge increase in the number of inmates has helped lower the crime rate by incapacitating more criminals behind bars, though there is no generally accepted way to measure the impact; crime rose sharply in the mid- and late 1980's, for example, even as the rate of imprisonment rose much faster.

But a growing number of criminologists say they are troubled by evidence that the spiraling growth of prisons is also causing unintended consequences that may actually contribute to increased crime as well as undermine families and inner-city neighborhoods.

And then there's this from 1998:

The nation's prison population grew by 5.2 percent in 1997, according to the Justice Department, even though crime has been declining for six straight years, suggesting that the imprisonment boom has developed a built-in growth dynamic independent of the crime rate, experts say.

In a new report, the Justice Department said the number of Americans in local jails and in state and Federal prisons rose to 1,725,842 in 1997, up from 1.1 million in 1990. During that period, the incarceration rate in state and Federal prisons rose to 445 per 100,000 Americans in 1997, up from 292 per 100,000 in 1990.

As for why the number of prisoners continues to grow while crime drops, Martin Horn, Pennsylvania's Secretary of Corrections, said: ''You have to understand that as incarcerating more people has helped reduce crime, the number of people we sent to prison in previous years is tending to build up, creating a delayed effect. So you've built in this escalating growth.''

And then:

Still another reason for the growth, while crime drops, is that an increasing number of prisoners are being incarcerated for parole violations, about 30 percent today compared with 15 percent in 1980, Mr. Beck said. That means that the larger the number of prisoners, the bigger the number of people who will someday be released, and then, either because of their own criminal propensities or their experience behind bars, will be likely to commit some new violation and be rearrested.

Not much of a paradox, huh?

Jack then uses the research of Marvin E. Wolfgang to support his general point that gun control is unnecessary and that they deliver a "false sense of security."

Perhaps Jack should have paid closer attention to Wolfgang's bio.  From his obit at the Times:

However dispassionate was the form of his testimony, its content was sufficiently stirring to provoke any number of mailed threats. ''We kept a folder of these loony letters,'' said Esther Lafair, who had been Mr. Wolfgang's secretary for 27 years.

She said the letters came in whenever he offered reasons that the death penalty should not be used or how the distribution of handguns should be curbed.

Uh-oh for Jack.

Doesn't he read his columns before submitting them?

Tracking Teh Crazie - Franklin Graham Style

It's always important to know what your ideological adversaries are up to (it's that whole Sun-Tsu/Art of War thing - see Chapter 3, verse 18).

Today, we take a look at the Reverend Franklin Graham. I started (as I often do when I'm trackin' teh crazie) at World Net Daily.  This morning, I found this:

He was banned from a Pentagon prayer service because of Muslim complaints about his beliefs, and he later charged that Barack Obama has “shaken his fist” at God by endorsing same-sex “marriage,” so no one would expect mild platitudes from the strong-willed Franklin Graham.

But to liken America’s current situation to the status of the Old Testament tribe of Judah under Manasseh, the “wickedest king to rule?”

That the message that can be taken from a recent public letter posted on the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association website.

The WND writer, Bob Unruh, sums up Franklin's message with this:

There, Franklin Graham warns that the nation’s financial cliff is nothing to worry about compared to the spiritual cliff he sees.

And Graham uses 2 Kings 22-23 to warn us about the deep doo-doo we're in - but the solution offered by Scripture can't possibly be comforting.  This is how Graham begins his letter:

My hope and prayer is that the Lord will once again move in our land. It can happen, and we are trusting that a fire of revival will ignite as tens of thousands of homes are opened up this year to share the Gospel through My Hope with Billy Graham.

Oooo...scary forewarning here but no details.  After bemoaning the usual causes (for conservatives) of our once great nation's moral decline ("blatant immorality, senseless violence, media-friendly gay and lesbian behavior" as well as "same-sex couples lining up at courthouses in several states to receive their marriage licenses") Franklin writes:

No question our country’s foundations are being destroyed, but I am reminded of an era in the Old Testament where the Lord moved in a dramatic way to bring godly change to a spiritually dark and depraved nation like Judah, whose moral foundations had been seriously eroded.

Manasseh was the wickedest king to rule over Judah. Throughout his 55 years of evil reign, the land had been defiled with innocent blood. He led Judah into witchcraft, sorcery, and the worship of false gods and idols, including the fertility goddess Asherah. He even sacrificed his own son in the fires of idolatry.

Not many years later, God worked in an extraordinary and unexpected way to bring national revival.

Josiah, Manasseh’s grandson, became king at age 8. Ten years after becoming king, Josiah asked his high priest, Hilkiah, to collect funds to repair the temple that was in disrepair. As they worked, they uncovered the book of the law (the first five books of the Bible). Apparently it had been lost and neglected for a number of years. When Josiah heard the books read aloud by a scribe, he tore his clothes and said, “Great is the wrath of the Lord that is kindled against us, because our fathers have not obeyed the words of this book, to do according to all that is written concerning us” (2 Kings 22:13).

It's a lot to take in, but it exposes what "morality" and "religious liberty" means to teh crazies - this bunch at least.  Let's start with Manasseh.  What did he do?  While 2 Kings 21 mentions "so much innocent blood that he filled Jerusalem from end to end" and a sacrifice of his own son, much more time is spent with Manasseh's religious transgressions:

3 He rebuilt the high places his father Hezekiah had destroyed; he also erected altars to Baal and made an Asherah pole, as Ahab king of Israel had done. He bowed down to all the starry hosts and worshiped them. 4 He built altars in the temple of the Lord, of which the Lord had said, “In Jerusalem I will put my Name.” 5 In the two courts of the temple of the Lord, he built altars to all the starry hosts. 6 He sacrificed his own son in the fire, practiced divination, sought omens, and consulted mediums and spiritists. He did much evil in the eyes of the Lord, arousing his anger.

7 He took the carved Asherah pole he had made and put it in the temple, of which the Lord had said to David and to his son Solomon, “In this temple and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, I will put my Name forever. 8 I will not again make the feet of the Israelites wander from the land I gave their ancestors, if only they will be careful to do everything I commanded them and will keep the whole Law that my servant Moses gave them.” 9 But the people did not listen. Manasseh led them astray, so that they did more evil than the nations the Lord had destroyed before the Israelites.

The Lord's initial solution to Manasseh's transgressions?  2 Kings 12-15:

12 Therefore this is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: I am going to bring such disaster on Jerusalem and Judah that the ears of everyone who hears of it will tingle. 13 I will stretch out over Jerusalem the measuring line used against Samaria and the plumb line used against the house of Ahab. I will wipe out Jerusalem as one wipes a dish, wiping it and turning it upside down. 14 I will forsake the remnant of my inheritance and give them into the hands of enemies. They will be looted and plundered by all their enemies; 15 they have done evil in my eyes and have aroused my anger from the day their ancestors came out of Egypt until this day.”

That's a lot of innocent blood, too. But that's not for me to point out, I guess.  Let's get back to Graham.  He writes:

When the Word of God was then read aloud to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, it pierced their souls and the stage was set for national repentance. Idols were smashed, spiritists and mediums forcibly removed, and the worship of the one true God reinstated. Once again, righteousness ruled.

Not exactly a complete reckoning of the events of 2 Kings 23, doncha know.  Please keep in mind that last sentence as you read this:

4 The king ordered Hilkiah the high priest, the priests next in rank and the doorkeepers to remove from the temple of the Lord all the articles made for Baal and Asherah and all the starry hosts. He burned them outside Jerusalem in the fields of the Kidron Valley and took the ashes to Bethel. 5 He did away with the idolatrous priests appointed by the kings of Judah to burn incense on the high places of the towns of Judah and on those around Jerusalem—those who burned incense to Baal, to the sun and moon, to the constellations and to all the starry hosts. 6 He took the Asherah pole from the temple of the Lord to the Kidron Valley outside Jerusalem and burned it there. He ground it to powder and scattered the dust over the graves of the common people.

There was a general purging of any other religious practice in the area (and no mention of any of these events occurring because of Manasseh's sacrifice of his own son or the blood-filled Jerusalem - no, these events occurred due to the religious practices Josiah opposed).  At the end of these tales of destruction we have this:

19 Just as he had done at Bethel, Josiah removed all the shrines at the high places that the kings of Israel had built in the towns of Samaria and that had aroused the Lord’s anger. 20 Josiah slaughtered all the priests of those high places on the altars and burned human bones on them. Then he went back to Jerusalem.

To Franklin Graham, this is a story of how "righteousness ruled."  The solution to our nation's peril?  If this story is any indication, for Franklin Graham it's the imposition of his faith over everyone else and the destruction of any religion he opposes.

Trackin teh crazie.

Really?

By all means. Let's now spend taxpayer money defending Penn State for their cover-up of the rape of children at the behest of the former state attorney general who sat on the complaints for two years. (Especially after said former AG -- now Governor -- originally accepted the NCAA sanctions almost six months ago.)

Congratulations!

Photo by Chuck Pascal
Congratulations to PA State Representative Erin Molchany, PA State Representative Ed Gainey and PA Auditor General Eugene DePasquale on being sworn in to your new offices yesterday -- looking forward to great things from all of you!