Cory Maye
When is a cop-killer on death row not a murderer? By rights, when he didn't know the man he shot was a cop, and quite reasonably believed he was protecting his home against a violent break-in.

Radley Balko, poring over court testimony and police reports, is putting together a pretty good case online that one Cory Maye of Prentiss, Mississippi, fits that description.

The link above leads to all Mr. Balko's posts about Mr. Maye's case at his blog, "The Agitator."* Balko also has an article at Fox News on Wednesday, "Railroaded onto Death Row." Maye lived next door to a drug dealer who had surrendered to the local police in the night of December 26, 2001. She or someone else then fingered Maye as a dealer in his own right -- only Ron Jones, the dead policeman, ever knew who the informant was, and he apparently didn't write that down.** However strong or (likely) weak the reason for the ensuing police raid on Maye's half of the duplex, the results were tragic:

Late that night, Maye said he awoke to a furious pounding on his front door. According to his court testimony, he became frightened for his safety, and for the safety of his daughter. He ran back to the bedroom, where his daughter was asleep on the bed. He retrieved the gun he had for home protection, loaded it, chambered a round, and lay down on the floor next to her, hoping the noises and/or intruders outside would subside.

They didn't. Soon enough, Maye says, the door to Maye's bedroom flew open, and a figure entered from the outside. Scared, Maye fired his gun three times.

The plot has thickened considerably over the years: a public defense attorney was cashiered by the city fathers for continuing to defend Maye, prior attorneys did slapdash work (one was completely unprepared for death penalty phase defense work, saying "I didn't think it would get that far"), police testimony in court was strikingly more detailed than their original reports, and it appears there may not have been a well-justified warrant authorizing the kind of raid that occurred.

The central point, of course, is whether the police announced themselves as such as they stormed Maye's residence. They say yes, Maye says no -- and Balko feels the circumstantial evidence supports Maye.

In a December, 2005 post, Balko outlined the significance of the case:

Seems to me this is the kind of case that ought to stir up both left and right. The left, I think, for its tradition of defending civil liberties. And the right for its tradition of standing up for a man's right to defend his home.

The larger issue is of course the abhorrent practice of no-knock and short-knock drug raids to begin with. ... [Maye's case] isn't the only outrage. There are dozens more.

Via Jim Henley.


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* The definitive summary post is here.
** Maye's attorney points out it's not usual procedure for the investigating officer (Jones) to accompany a raid, because of exactly what happened: he died, taking the investigative details with him. Not sure what to make of that for the case, other than yet another reasonable doubt about the whole thing.
EDIT, 2/19: deleted a sentence stating that Balko claims some criminals have adopted "no knock" mimicry, ie, pretending they're cops. I thought I read that somewhere among Balko's Cory Maye posts, but I can't find it now.
UPDATE, 2/20: It can't hurt to SIGN THIS PETITION calling for Cory Maye's unconditional pardon. Via Karen.
posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:00:00 PM -- |    

 
That 4's thing
I've been tagged by Karen ("Peripetia") to continue the online getting-to-know-you thing called "meme of fours"; thanks! Here goes:

4 jobs I’ve had: salmon packer, phonebank/database supervisor, sunflower roguer, research analyst.
4 movies I can watch over and over: The Hunt for Red October, Bourne Identity, Lawrence of Arabia, You Can Count On Me. That last one features no explosions whatsoever, so there.
4 places I’ve lived: Oak Ridge, Tennessee; Tuebingen, Germany; Klawock, Alaska; Oakland, California.
4 TV shows I love: don't watch much TV these days. Happy to sit down for Seinfeld, The Simpsons, Law and Order. Working my way through The Sopranos on DVD.
4 highly regarded and recommended TV shows I haven’t seen: Battlestar Galactica, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Lost, Oprah.
4 places I’ve vacationed: Zanzibar, Ribadesella (Spain), Chincoteague, the Languedoc.
4 of my favorite dishes: beer can chicken (rubbed with 1:paprika/1:brown sugar/some:cayenne); homemade lasagna; "Armenian soup" (hamburger, herbs, garlic, broth, tomato paste, noodles, mint, yoghurt topping); crabs, Old Bay seasoning, and beer -- it's my blog, I say it's a dish.
4 sites I visit daily: Hullabaloo, fact-esque, Talking Points Memo, alicublog.
4 places I'd rather be right now: some warm beach near some interesting city (were it daytime), a good restaurant in Paris, browsing in a good bookstore, curled up with my family. Hey! I can do that right now.
4 bloggers I'm tagging: Tim Weber, Pablo Shounin, Gary Farber, Nell. Outta here.



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UPDATE: Tim really likes his mom's spaghetti and meatballs; Gary doesn't usually do memes, but will consider this one... aha: an ampleness of amygdaldom; Pablo aka Paul stabs from hell's heart at me. posted by Thomas Nephew at 7:01:00 PM -- |    

 
"Sure we did it" -- the Plame case defense?
Possibly the real news flash from yesterday's Fox News Cheney interview:

HUME: Let me ask you another question. Is it your view that a vice president has the authority to declassify information?

CHENEY: There is an executive order to that effect.

What an interesting, perceptive question for Brit Hume to ask! Via Memeorandum, I see that Pete Yost (Associated Press) points out:

Vice President Dick Cheney says he has the power to declassify government secrets, raising the possibility that he authorized his former chief of staff to pass along sensitive prewar data on Iraq to reporters. [...]

"I have certainly advocated declassification. I have participated in declassification decisions," Cheney said. Asked for details, he said, "I don't want to get into that. There's an executive order that specifies who has classification authority, and obviously it focuses first and foremost on the president, but also includes the vice president."

While that "prewar data on Iraq" seems like an odd description, Yost's discussion then moves on to the possible implications for the Valerie Plame case.

The implications being, "sure we did it, we were following orders, and they were legal orders -- just ask Dick." This might be more helpful to Rove than to Libby at this point. That's because Libby faces coverup/obstruction type charges, and those remain valid whether or not the underlying act was legal by virtue of vice presidential pixie dust. Maybe my Dick Cheney is innocent headline is on the verge of coming true.

I wonder whether the order for such a declassification has to be in writing, and if so, whether we'll see it -- or that executive order Cheney's talking about, for that matter. After all, none of this is any of our business. If Cheney wants to do the old "ready-fire-aim," that's his God-given right as vice president, whether he wings his hunting buddy, a covert operative, or -- oops -- a certain oil-rich corner of the world. It'll all work out for his best.


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UPDATE, 2/16: Steve Clemons locates executive orders 12958 and 13292, and argues that they make declassification subject to mandatory review, not vice-presidential fiat. If so, and if this is seriously the Libby/Rove/Cheney "defense," either there's an official "let's out Plame" paper trail, or Cheney violated the relevant executive orders.
UPDATE, 2/16: More from Stygius, Josh Marshall, firedoglake, Liberal Oasis, David Corn. LO says

Bush did give the Vice President more power than Clinton had allowed – specifically, an exemption from a mandatory review process when there is a declassification request." But that is not the same as giving Cheney the broad declassification authority that the President has.

An important point I get from Liberal Oasis is that even these executive orders don't give the president the authority to override laws passed by Congress against revealing the identity of a covert agent. Unless, I suppose, his unilateral unitary executive super-duper commander-in-chief duties demand it. So maybe we'll have to fix those laws too.
posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:30:00 PM -- |    

 
Dear Democratic Party: one other thing

I'm hearing, to my dismay, that Republicans on the Judiciary Committee are starting to think the thing to do about the NSA program scandal is basically to legalize what's going on and forget about it.

That would be par for their course, and it's more or less beyond our control.

But I'm also hearing that some Democrats feel the same way. What can they be thinking?! Please know that if I don't hear some leadership again on this, and soon, not just from Al Gore, but from the DNC and from Congress, I'm going to quit contributing to the Democratic Party, and I'm going to urge others to quit as well. There just won't be any point left.

You're faced with lawlessness and an unaccountable national security state; you'd better not just fold.

Thomas Nephew

(Submitted to the DNC website on February 15, 2006.)

I like and respect both Howard Dean, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi, so I'm crossing my fingers the kind of advice I'm reading about isn't being taken. But it never hurts to let them know what you think.

Sometimes you at least get a chuckle out of it. I tried to contact Senator Robert Byrd back before the Alito filibuster attempt, but I was in a rush, and couldn't find a contact form or any way to e-mail him while hunting around his web site. So I filled out a donation form with my message instead of the home address and so forth, and submitted that. Yesterday I got an e-mail from Byrd that began, "Dear I'm very disappointed." posted by Thomas Nephew at 5:50:00 PM -- |    

 
Pennacchio vs. Casey and the future of the Democratic Party

On the day Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats unanimously rejected the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Samuel Alito, their anointed candidate for what is seen as the country's most vulnerable Republican-held Senate seat announced his support for the President's pick. Pennsylvania State Treasurer Robert Casey Jr., the man Democrats and liberal interest groups have lined up behind in his challenge to right-wing Republican Senator Rick Santorum, dismissed concerns about Alito that had been raised by the very senators and organizations he expects to help elect him in November. According to Casey, "The arguments against Judge Alito do not rise to the level that would require a vote denying him a seat on the US Supreme Court."

--John Nichols, The Nation, February 9, "Democratic Alarms in PA."

In a recent post, Digby writes that establishment right wing Democrats ("Joementum Dems") must expect withering criticism from grassroots writers like Digby, Glenn Greenwald, Chris Bowers, Peter Daou, and others:

Joementum Dems, on the other hand, need to recognize that we are in a partisan time and that requires a partisan strategy. We are going to hit them hard every time they repeat Republican talking points and otherwise enable the opposition to dominate the media discourse. There is no more room for bipartisan gestures that only benefit the GOP side of the equation.

But as a famous Pennsylvanian once said, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. We can accept Bob Casey's nomination as a foregone conclusion; then if all goes well we can expect him to join the Joe Liebermans of the Democratic Party and cross over to the other side whenever we need him most -- Supreme Court nominations, the national security debate, women's rights, elementary election politics.

Or we can support Chuck Pennacchio, his opponent in the Democratic primaries. Unlike Casey, Pennacchio opposed Alito, he supports women making their own decisions about abortion, he wants a plan and a timetable for getting out of Iraq, and he doesn't try to be so much like Rick Santorum, the incumbent Republican senator, that even the Santorum camp is amused: "...you [Casey Jr.] wait for Senator Santorum…and then days or weeks later, you come out with the same position. For example, on questions about supporting the Iraq war or working to reduce home heating costs, you watched Rick Santorum articulate his positions, and then followed his lead by stating the same position on the issue."

Last week, I wrote "Why not Pennacchio?" responding in part to beliefs by some big name bloggers that Pennacchio was simply not "viable" -- arguably evidence that it's not just journalists and Democrats who've internalized Republican whispers about what will and will not fly politically. As I mentioned, a recent Zogby poll suggests Pennacchio does better than Casey in head-to-head matchups with Santorum, once the candidates' positions (or lack thereof) are known.

Even though it focuses on Casey vs. Santorum, a recent Quinnipiac poll also bears out that Pennsylvania voters are more in tune with Pennacchio than they are with Casey; for instance, Pennsylvania voters say abortion should be legal in most or all cases by 53 to 41%, with the remainder undecided,* they are trending towards Pennacchio that the Iraq war was the wrong thing to do, and Casey's favorables are actually declining as his campaign proceeds. As the Quinnipiac summary points out, "...the campaign is just beginning and Santorum has a rock-hard base to build on, while Casey has not been tested by extensive television exposure or debates."

Under those circumstances, even Democratic Party silverbacks ought to be thinking "hey, maybe we made a mistake here." There's no reason for the rest of us to wait for that.

"Junior" Casey's advantage over Pennacchio is simply name recognition; his father was governor once. But that's what blogs and grassroots activists are for: to give our allies and causes some name recognition of their own. Accordingly, this post is part of the Pennacchio Online Petition Drive that eRobin ("factesque"), Albert Yee ("philly"), Kathy Flake ("What Do I Know?") and I are hoping other bloggers will join by posting about Pennacchio and trackbacking to eRobin's post. The goals are threefold: buzz, bucks, and ballot petitions -- Pennacchio still needs to gather signatures to get on the ballot in many Pennsylvania counties.

A side note: I'm not from Pennsylvania, but eRobin and Albert are. I think that this race is important enough to the future of the Democratic Party that bloggers who decide they like Pennacchio better than Casey should feel free to support him whether they're Pennsylvanians or not.

It may be that we won't win, but it's crucial that we try. I'll let the Pennacchio campaign have the last word:

Everyone agrees that defeating Rick Santorum is a top priority for 2006, but to win we must provide a sharp contrast to his right wing agenda. Chuck’s clear and unwavering positions, grassroots organization skills, and winning track record give us the best chance to win. We will get the Democratic Party and the country we’re willing to work for.

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* 1661 PA voters surveyed between January 31 and February; the margin of error is +/- 2.4%.
posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:00:00 PM -- |    

 
All toons, all the time: Toles cartoon followup
In a post on Sunday that was mainly about the readers-vs.-ombudsman battle over Abramoff at the Washington Post, Avedon Carol agreed with ombudsman Deborah Howell's defense of the Washington Post's decision not to reprint the Danish cartoons, but added parenthetically:

And shame on people who thought that publishing the Toles cartoon that was critical of Rumsfeld is in any way equivalent. It's not Toles who is treating our wounded troops like dirt, it's the administration, and they deserve all the opprobrium we can throw at them for it.

OK, that stings, and maybe deservedly, whether or not Ms. Carol is discussing my "Obligatory cartoon riots statement" post of last week in particular -- in which I did see some equivalence between the two cases. (It's possible, she has linked to other posts here over the last few months.) Frequent commenter Nell also took exception to my discussion of the Toles cartoon, in which I wrote:

To tell the truth, I felt somewhat similarly about the recent Toles cartoon featuring a Iraq veteran quadruple amputee. I could see what Toles was saying, but it wasn't anywhere near as good as his usual stuff, and that image got in the way a lot, to put it mildly.

The administration certainly deserves all the scathing criticism it gets for failing to acknowledge the true troop levels needed in Iraq, and failing to adequately protect them in Iraq, to say nothing of the deceitful way it brought about the war in the first place.

Maybe no other image -- e.g., the conventional cartoon image of someone in a full-body cast, leg suspended -- would have accomplished that for Toles the way that of a quadruple amputee did. For my part, I simply flushed to think of an amputee veteran actually seeing the cartoon and feeling reduced to the role of political hockey puck.

Of course, that may be wildly off base -- maybe that's the last thing most amputee veterans would worry about, even if they happened to see the cartoon. In other words, maybe this was more about me dreaming up a rationale for my own discomfort. I was simply guessing many wounded veterans would resent the cartoon.

At any rate, if some did resent it for that reason, there's the equivalence, such as it is: an image was published despite being a predictable affront to the sensibilities of those depicted or affected, and it was deliberately chosen over other, less confrontational images.

Still, Ms. Carol is right to criticize the analogy for a couple of reasons. First, of course, Toles is not insulting the amputee the way the Mohammed/bomber cartoon insulted Muslims. I pointed this out myself:

But I say "somewhat similarly" because in the end, while Toles "objectified" the suffering of wounded veterans, his free speech was pointed "up", so to speak, at those in power: Rumsfeld, not the soldier, was Toles' target.

Second, Toles' cartoon would be merely the proximate cause of an amputee readers' (imagined) emotional distress -- the ultimate and principal blame for their condition belongs elsewhere. By contrast, the Jyllands-Posten cartoon is wholly and directly responsible for the offense given to Muslim readers described, willy nilly, as terrorists.

Toles deserves credit for the searing the plight of wounded veterans into our awareness, however briefly. In my earlier post, I claimed the image "got in the way" of Toles' point; on the other hand, I've probably thought more about that point than I would have if he'd used some cliched, less potent image.

That, in turn, is the stronger part of a serious pro-Jyllands-Posten argument, too -- the debate they've triggered is important; even if there were riots triggered as well, one should defend the ability to instigate such debates -- perhaps even by any means necessary. That view is ably set forth by Paul in the comments to my "Obligatory" post.

The purist position -- all speech must be defended by all, for lack of consensus about which to favor -- is in some ways attractive, and is in some ways simpler to defend than the one I tried to develop in my post, which boils down to considering the intended point (slanderous?) and the intended target (authority vs. despised other, in the extremes) before taking up the cause of defending a particular statement.

I continue to think that the Jyllands-Posten editorial decision to print the cartoons was made in bad faith. The cartoons were too inflammatory and too slanderous to address the supposed original issue (depicting Mohammed, even in a benign way), or to deserve my defense. I felt sucked into an unnecessary culture war I want no part of.

But in reaching for what I thought was an instructive, intermediate example -- the Toles cartoon -- I overreached, and Ms. Carol and Nell were right to object. That, in turn, showed me how slippery the slope can be from objecting to one instance of free speech, however objectionable, to objecting to too many. posted by Thomas Nephew at 10:20:00 PM -- |    

 
Have a blast!
I've always believed Justice Scalia should recuse himself from cases involving his hunting buddy Dick Cheney. Thinking about it some more today, I do want to clarify that I have no objection whatsoever to the two of them hunting together -- in fact, they should make the time to do it more often. Times like those are so rare, so precious. It's just how I feel. posted by Thomas Nephew at 1:08:00 AM -- |    

 
German blogger series: the Mohammed cartoons
Many German bloggers appear more uncertain, angered or rattled about the cartoon controversy than they have seemed about other topics like the Iraq war or Abu Ghraib. There's a fair amount of "don't push us around" attitude even among the usually leftish, moderate sections of the German blogosphere. An unscientific opinion sample:

Jochen Bittner writes for the German weekly Die Zeit, and maintains the blog "Beruf Terrorist [Profession Terrorist] The Enemy of all the World" -- Bittner is a knowledgeable reporter on the subject, and the blog name belies what is usually a calm, wry, analytical attitude. Nevertheless, in this case Bittner actually considers the cartoon a "justified provocation," and is, I think, uncharacteristically dismissive of all Islam itself:

If proof was needed that the Mohammed cartoons in the Danish newspaper 'Jyllands-Posten' were a justified provocation, then it's the reactions of broad parts of the Muslim world. [...]

And [someone who reacts to cartoons with bomb threats] should -- instead of accusing others of intolerance -- start to ask oneself if a religion that can't be laughed about might itself be responsible for a medieval attitude.

Schockwellenreiter, a very popular computers/Internet blogger with leftish/libertarian sensibilities, also dismisses anything but pure free speech concerns:

I actually never agree with Henryk M. Broder, but in the case of the monkey dance around the Mohammed cartoon controversy he's simply correct: the case is Exhibit A for how a democratic public pulls in its tail before a totalitarian, religiously dressed up sensibility. And presumably only, because they're afraid about their business with Petrodollars... [Spiegel Online]

Even if the cartoons (I've never seen them) presumably weren't exactly a high point in satirical art, the basic right to freedom of opinion is being sacrificed on the altar of religious insanity. I therefore declare the Mohammed-Karikaturen [Mohammed cartoons] to be the "Google of the Day."

Sven Scholz, on the other hand, sees needless provocations on both sides. He recommends a Frankfurter Allgemeine article by Nils Minkmar, provides an extensive link list of other blogger reactions, and writes

And it would be nice, if the press here and the mobs there would not let themselves be provoked, manipulated, or instrumentalized by anybody who comes along. Bigotry combined with banalities, regardless in which direction, and with obvious motivations, is really annoying. Tremendously.

Kuechenkabinett's ("Kitchen Cabinet") Stefan (who provides another huge links roundup) writes:

The clash of cultures is warned against, but these days it seems to be an almost unavoidable Self-fulfilling Prophecy. Polemics reign, and moderating voices succumb often enough to the crude demands of Hardliners on both sides.*

The Bembelkandidat writes:

a quarrel about cartoons and freedom of the press became a projection screen for fundamentalist prejudices and aggressions, no holds barred thrashings for everyone, all against all.

In the end it won't be good sense that wins out, but escalation, which in the West will be driven by the stigmatization of Muslims as seemingly hotblooded fundamentalists and carriers of the Islamic threat. Anti-Western sentiments irresponsibly fanned in the Muslim world help confirm the image of the reckless West.

Ulrich Speck ("Kosmoblog"), another Die Zeit pro-blogger, is more relaxed about it all:

But only a barely measurable, vanishingly small minority of the 1.3 billion Muslims in the world have participated in the unrest. This small degree of mobilization, even in countries whose governments are seeking to heat up the situation -- such as Iran -- can be seen as a clear rejection of a clash of cultures.

On the other hand, hardly any of the commenters for this post agreed with him, "Wachtmeister" for instance: "Even if I don't like it myself: the Clash of Civilizations is reality. Instead of denying it one should start dealing with it."

Don Dahlmann:

My feeling is that the cause for the reactions here and there, besides the political motivated ones, is fear. Here the diffuse fear of economic calamities, an unknown religion and behaviors that one isn't familiar with and can't avoid, there the fear about one's own identity and the loss of sovereignty to a superior military presence nearby.

Telegehirn ("Telebrain"), on the other hand, more or less says "bring it on," and wants to start a "DU BIST DIE MEINUNGSFREIHEIT!" ("You are freedom of opinion") campaign echoing the somewhat notorious "Du bist Deutschland" campaign. He writes:

Our times are not always perfect. No one denies that. Maybe the Islamists stand before Your newspaper building or the embassy of Your country is set on fire by fanatics. But we have kicked out the fires of total tyranny once before. Europe has enough free people who raise their voices against religious totalitarianism. You just have to open Your mouth.*

We have enough voices to drown out the chorus of fanatics. We are 425 million. You are the voice. Let's use it. You are Europe.

Politically Incorrect ("Achtung! Pro-US blog!") is a new one to me, but has apparently seen its readership climb to the top of the German charts lately. It seems to be a kind of LGF-lite, but they're working on it. Showing a photo of a victim of an Abu Sayyaf attack in Philippines side by side with one of the Danish cartoons, it asks:

Only one of these two pictures provoked Muslims to hysteria, fiery demonstrations, boycotts and death threats against the perpetrators. Do you know Islam well enough to figure out which picture that was?

Hinterding prefers a kind of scientific approach:

hello. this is a survey for Muslims who believe it is sinful to attempt to draw the Prophet Muhammad. in your opinion, at what point do these images start to become sinful?

Seems a fair question.

Of course many German blogs have reacted sparingly, if at all. Jens Scholz observes that "burning down embassies is a form of expression too, if you look at it that way." Andreas Schaefer simply links to a cartoon showing Muslims running out of stuff to burn and opting for Legos. Praschl et al at le sofa blog seem not to have mentioned the topic at all. Bildblog.de -- a kind of MediaMatters focused on the single German tabloid Bild, and the most visited German blog -- has apparently found nothing in that paper worth mentioning about the cartoon story.

Still, on the whole, the shoe seems to be on the other foot here compared to two and four years ago: it seems easier to run across German bloggers who see their own rights endangered, if not their safety, in a way that was not as salient to them in the past. The riots in France last year may also have contributed to some of the palpably greater unease, "Schnauze" (lip), and belligerence on display.

Whether sadly, deservedly, tragically, or some combination thereof, it's my (again, quite unscientific) impression that the picture of an undifferentiated and dangerous "Muslim enemy" is developing in Germany, just as it has in the U.S. in many quarters.

If so, that country's allegiance to the rule of law and equal protection under the law of its own Muslim minorities may soon be tested. So far, German courts have seemed to be equal to the task of facing down pressures to cut corners in the "clash of cultures"; the question is whether that will continue when that pressure comes from Berlin, not Washington, DC. As the question suggests, it's not like our country has shown the way of late.



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* TRANSLATION NOTES: "Medieval": voraufklaererisch, lit. pre-Enlightenment. The Kuechenkabinett writer used and capitalized the English phrases "Self fulfilling Prophecy" and "Hardliners." Telegehirn's "Your"s are capitalized to follow his/her use of the capitalized "Deine" in mid-sentence, signaling a slightly archaic, if not to say Voelkisch kind of polemic. Finally, I've taken the liberty of translating some sentences to a more active voice from the passive voice used by the German writer.
NOTE: German blogger series search link.
EDIT, 2/12: "that pressure comes" for "the pressure not to is".
posted by Thomas Nephew at 1:20:00 AM -- |