Posted on 07/31/2006 7:21:54 PM PDT by jmoo
Yet, when you point this out on CTV, you get the refrain of let us wait until trial to see what evidence Nifong has.
Oh that's right. He's short and chubby. Or is it skinny and little? I can't keep all the bad descriptions straight anymore.
But seriously, he is cute and adorable. He looks like an altar boy. Just from looking at him I'd feel protective of him because he looks so young. I'd have a tough time believing he's a rapist from the way he looks. They'd have to show me some serious evidence and they appear to have none.
Well, almost 48 hours without reading new insanity being posted on the CTV duke boards. Maybe the bazarro-land of Two Braids, Savannah & Daghda was just a figment of my imagination. Anyway, it's good to read rational, logical, sane postings over here.
An interesting link here:
http://www.newswithviews.com/Roberts/carey127.htm
The 2006 mid-term election in NC won't involve a Senate seat or the governorship, so the turnout should be relatively low. Conventional wisdom says that benefits Republicans.
Here is a site you all should bookmark. It's got just about every stat you can imagine about the political landscape at the state level. It's very well organized and user friendly --
http://www.thegreenpapers.com/
In this section, they use a mathematical model to score the relative strength of the two parties in each state. Here are the results for NC and other evenly balanced states--
Leaning DEMOCRATIC (51 to 60 Dem points):
Maine (60); Vermont (56)1; Arkansas (53); Pennsylvania (53); North Carolina (51).
Leaning REPUBLICAN (51 to 60 GOP points):
Minnesota (51); North Dakota (54); Indiana (53)
___________________________________
Does the GOP have a reasonable chance of winning one or both Houses of the NC Legislature - or at least making significant gains? I'm wondering if there is an opportunity to pressure Dems in NC outside Durham County.
Hell, we could even reach an understanding with Durham County GOP Chairman Steve Monks - You support Anyone But Nifong, and the blogosphere will go all out to support the GOP in NC state elections in 2006.
Greta did a segment on Natalie Holloway
And a segement on Mel Gibson
BUT, no time to discuss the new Special designation of the Duke case and how & why it came about, no time to discuss Kim Roberts bizzare treatment by the NC judicial system.
Tomorrow, I'm predicting, they'll do a story on 'has Jimmy Hoffa been found?' and - exclusive pictures of the sink that Scott Peterson uses in jail.
And the obligatory segment on Mel Gibson - can't forget that.
What's Greta's e-mail? We should all e-mail her to do more on the Duke case. She's said that it's one of the most disturbing cases she's seen so I hope she keeps covering it.
She said on her blog that she was getting alot of e-mails to do coverage of Duke.
Is the story on the special designation confirmed?
ontherecord @ foxnews.com
We should all e-mail her to do more on the Duke case.
Capital idea! Here's what I'll tell Greta I want covered--
1. The ongoing coverup by Durham authorities and local newspapers of the alleged attack and racial slurs by white Durham PD officers on a black man. Does Fox News have the resources to find out the scoop on the BALD man?
2. The Cheek/ABN campaign, in which the people of Durham County have an opportunity to exercise their constitutional rights, and get rid of a malicious and rogue DA.
http://johninnorthcarolina.blogspot.com/2006/08/talking-to-jicc-regulars-and-readers-8.html
Highlights:
Many of you have been asking about any liability the N&O might have for what it's done to the lacrosse players and coaches, their families, and the community.
I been asking journalists and attorneys about that. I hope in a week or two I can say something that may shed a little light.
I never made any contact this week with Durham City Mgr. Patrick Baker. I did get an email this afternoon from attorney Charns. He's also not had any contact from Baker this week.
Charns and I are going to get together tomorrow so I can take another look at the public part of his CrimeStoppers file.
I want to nail down timelines regarding when the first CS poster was produced, how soon thereafter the N&O's "vigilante" poster appeared, and just when DPD Maj. Lee Russ directed DPD Cpl. David Addison to change the first CS poster.
Russ' direction resulted in Addison producing a second, modified version of the first CS poster; which was again changed at Russ' direction, that direction from Russ thereby leading to the production of a third version of the CS poster.
I also want to learn as much as I can regarding how the CS "wanted" poster production timelines fit with the production timelines of the N&O's "vigilante" poster.
I'll post another Talking with JinC and Readers post tomorrow evening.
In the meantime, if anyone sees the fat, bald principle Durham Police investigator of the Duke lacrosse frame-up, please tell him to stop hanging out in sports bars and finish those investigative report notes he was supposed to have completed four months ago.
http://blogs.newsobserver.com/editor/index.php?title=new_on_the_home_page&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1
LOL, great post! :>
It is surreal.
It reminds me of Rathergate - even though the paperwork was a complete fabrication - Rather and his producer clowns said it was still true.
The mods at CTV are just far-left psychos.
Mangum is a witness (the complaining witness) and can be called to testify.
This morning's stories.
Council eats, meets; Durham pays
http://www.newsobserver.com/145/story/467562.html
Clashes over online social networks
http://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060804/NEWS/608040379/1001
http://www.heraldsun.com/opinion/hsletters/index.html#758193
Nifong is on the mark
Referencing the astute obsevation that District Attorney Mike Nifong made during his press conference today about political appointments, he affirmed: "I am struck by the irony that this group of citizens wants to use this procedure to make an end run around the electorate now," Nifong said. "I believe that Durham's district attorney should be selected by the voters of Durham, not by the governor."
I hope Nifong was listening to himself when he said those words, because Nifong ironically embodies the truth of that very mistake. Look at the mess we have been saddled with when the governor appointed the current DA.
ROBERT MICHAEL PANOFF
Durham
August 4, 2006
Nifong courageous?
In an August 1 editorial, you found District Attorney Mike Nifong "courageous" and "contrite" in his discussion of the Duke lacrosse case at a recent press conference. Unfortunately, there is little courage to be found in a desperate appeal to sympathy by an embattled politician. And Nifong was hardly contrite as he continued to obfuscate the relevant legal standards for his conduct.
You also stated that Nifong "still believes he has a good case" and find that significant for some reason. Yet, Nifong apparently lacks the courage of those convictions. After ramrodding evidence through a hopelessly backlogged SBI crime lab and racing to get indictments before the election, Nifong is now trying to postpone the day of reckoning until next spring.
Nifong refused to even look at any of the exculpatory evidence proffered to him by the defense. This action violated North Carolina Rule of Professional Conduct 3.8 which prohibits a prosecutor from avoiding "pursuit of evidence merely because he or she believes it will damage the prosecutor's case."
In hiding his eyes from that evidence, Nifong abdicated the responsibilities of the office to which he was appointed and should have no further claim to it.
While, ideally, the voters of Durham County should elect the person who will be their district attorney, at least they have the opportunity to choose who they do not want for that office. The writer is a member of Friends of Duke University.
JASON TRUMPBOUR
Parkton, Md.
August 4, 2006
Probably privileged, but whereas attorney-client isn't surmountable by need/no other source available, work product is. Further, if Nifong revealed any of their conversation to any non-governmental source, such as a private lab, I think it would be discoverable.
The CTV boards are run like a gulag.
Interesting Nifong scenario posted over on Talk Left this morning.
http://forums.talkleft.com/index.php?topic=16.165
Quote
Did Nifong intentionally take on this case knowing that he was flat-out wrong? Or did he just not research it deeply enough to know he was wrong?
This is an interesting question, and deserves an answer regardless of its source.
Early days: Nifong needed and wanted a case something like this for political purposes. Presumably when he first heard of the case he believed the accusation, but this was wishful thinking based on insufficient examination of the evidence. It was his duty to examine the evidence available from the preliminary police investigation, medical reports, etc., and evaluate it rationally. This duty he did not fulfill, and if he continued for some time to "believe" the accusation, this was culpable self-deception, sustained by averting his eyes from evidence pointing to a conclusion contrary to what he wanted to believe.
End of March / Beginning of April: The highly irregular line-up on April 4th, rightly cited by the one Duke law professor who said anything publicly in defense of the students as crucial, carefully avoided any opportunity for the accuser to discredit herself by choosing a non-player, and involved obvious steering of the accuser. This is a clear indication that Nifong and his satellites were acting in bad faith. This fact very very very strongly suggests that by March 31, when arrangements for the charade were made, Nifong was at the very least aware that, if an attack did occur, the accuser was unable to identify the attackers reliably. In many malicious prosecutions, including all the scandals about corrupt state crime labs that have broken over the past few years, the prosecutor "believes" the accused are guilty, but knowing he doesn't have enough legitimate evidence "improves" the evidence. In this case the bogus line-up procedure may have been an attempt to "improve" the evidence against three he already suspected on tenuous grounds (described by Newport and others: being left off the list of party-goers, facing unrelated charges in another jurisdiction, and having an initialed towel with semen on it somewhere in the house). Of course, it may also have already been something worse than that, a plan to have three "identified" who seemed vulnerable, not because he strongly believed they were guilty, but because he believed someone was guilty and that if these three weren't, once they were accused they would tell him who was. And of course, it may also already have been something even worse than that, a plan to make good on campaign promises despite a consciousness that he had no strong reason to believe a crime had really occurred.
Mid-April: After the return of the first DNA results, Nifong knew the accuser had lied to him about her sexual activity in the period immediately prior to the incident, and had ample grounds to conclude that her whole accusation was a "crock". Yet the next day after the release of the DNA results to the defense, he held a campaign rally promising his constituents to continue the case. By this time he had clearly crossed a line and was displaying, at the very least, depraved indifference to the truth, and a motivation to proceed having nothing to do with guilt or innocence.
Today:The next step for a prosecutor on the road to hell is to pursue defendants he knows are innocent of the charge against them because he thinks they are guilty of something else. For Nifong it appears that being white male athletes from rich families and students at Duke is enough of a "something else" to continue a persecution despite overwhelming evidence of innocence that, try as he may not to look at it, simply cannot have escaped his attention by now.
Quote
Were the police investigators and medical staff similarly duped by the accuser?
Police: There is no indication that the police were duped. They were overheard by the Duke cop as saying the accuser lacked credibility, and in this they were correct. Their judgment was overridden by Nifong, who took over the investigation, reversed the conclusions of the first-responders, and put his creatures on the case.
Medical staff: There is no indication that the medical staff were duped; normally they record facts and do not make judgments on legal as contrasted with medical issues and rape is a legal, not a medical concept. There is no serious indication that any of them departed from usual professional practice and endorsed the accuser's claims; their reports directly contradict most of the claims in the prosecution's early statements (anal injuring, choking, etc.). When I say no "serious" indication, I am discounting the warrant affadavit statement of Himan, who claimed that Livecy told him it would be a violation of HIPAA to give him a conclusion, and then immediately violated HIPAA by giving him a conclusion, as well as Nifong's various early statements, contradicted by the actual contents of the medical reports.
Quote
Or has Nifong pursued this case against their advise?
Nifong neither seeks nor takes advice from anyone.
On the principle that one should be fair even to those who are themselves grossly unfair, I should note a hypothesis that has been suggested before, that Nifong may have seen the accuser in a beaten-up condition, reinforcing his initial belief.
Of course this in no way excuses in the least his failure to examine carefully the Duke medical report and Jariel Johnson's statement, which between them would lead a rational observer to the conclusion that if there was a beating before the UNC hospital visit, it was given her after the Duke hospital visit either by (1) an associate in the "escort" trade, angered at her loss of money, or by (2) a boy-friend, angered at the discovery of her double life. (The "hit my head on the sink" claim looks like a classic of the kind of false explanation that turns up in domestic violence cases, as per (2), but could also turn up in a criminal intimidation case, as per (1).)
I should add that any answer to the question "What did Nifong know when?" is speculative, and will remain so until we have testimony from his accomplices (Gottlieb, Himan, Clayton, Wilson, Saaacks, et al.)
"It's just a tradition we have," said Gray, who has worked at City Hall more than 20 years. "If the council or a committee requests food, they get food."
http://www.newsobserver.com/145/story/467562.html
Me thinks this is just the tip of the iceberg. My hunch is the council and committees are requesting and getting more than food.
Interesting Bell and Baker disagree whether the taxpayer paid buffets are private or public. Also noteworthy the N & O is asking the questions. Keep digging!
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