Jay Mariotti - Former ESPN Personality Charged With 3 Felony Counts

Jay Mariotti and Girlfriend (?) (Deadspin.com)

Jay Mariotti, the once-on-the-rise and now former ESPN Personality, who first gained fame as a biting sports columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times and then on AOL Fanhouse, is in hot water again, and just less than a year after his headline-making arrest on suspicion of domestic abuse.

It was after an altercation with a woman described then as his girlfriend that started with an argument at a club in Santa Monica, California and then ended with Jay's reportedly violent confrontation at her Venice Beach apartment.

Eventually, Jay Mariotti was charged with seven misdemeanor counts, but the four domestic-violence-related counts and charges of grand theft and false imprisonment were dismissed.

This time, Jay reportedly had some kind of confrontation or encounter with the same woman, and on the same day he was told by the LA court to stay away from her. He was charged with three felony counts on Wednesday.

According to the LA Times, His lawyer Shawn Holley said "These allegations are complete fabrications, made by an accuser who, since October of last year, has doggedly tried to have Mr. Marriotti arrested and charged on numerous past occasions without success."

If you recognize the name, Shawn Holley, she's the same attorney who regularly represents Lindsay Lohan. One thing's for sure, he's got a good chance of getting past this episode with Ms. Holley's help.

But.

What the hell's wrong with Jay Mariotti that he can't take his focus off this ex-girlfriend and on to restarting his career and getting back on ESPN? If the court told him to stay away from her, there are billions of other women on the planet, why not just find them?

If she's "tried to have Mr. Marriotti arrested and charged on numerous past occasions" that should be enough for him to first, stay away from her, and second, carry a camcorder to record those times when she approaches him first, and third, file a restraining order of his own.

That's what he should have done.

And how's former Chicago Sun-Times colleague Roger Ebert responding to this on Twitter?

ebertchicago Roger Ebert
Sportswriter Jay Mariotti, our least favorite former Chicago Sun-Times writer, faces felony charges: http://bit.ly/iZ2QKK
2 hours ago Favorite Retweet Reply

There you go...

GOP Approves Jobs Bill to Deny UI to Jobless Lacking Diploma or GED

GOP Approves Jobs Bill to Deny UI to Jobless Lacking Diploma or GED.

Wednesday, a congressional panel approved a Republican bill that would allow states to divert $31 billion worth of federal money for the long-term unemployed and use it to pay down state debt instead. The bill also would disqualify jobless Americans from receiving unemployment benefits if they lack a high school diploma or a GED. The bill would also set a national minimum standard for work-search requirements for laid off workers who apply for benefits.

The Jobs, Opportunity, Benefits and Services Act (JOBS Act for short), approved by the House Ways and Means Committee, would let states trim or even eliminate extra weeks of benefits, which currently support more 4.1 million laid-off workers. The bill now heads to the full House of Representatives.

What is next? No UI benefits unless you have a college degree? This is just the latest assault on the poor, especially since the GOP seems determined to cut education programs and has already devastated the college grants once available to assist low income Americans seeking a college education.

Isn’t it bad enough that Congress and Obama refuse to lift a finger to help millions of 99ers and other UI exhaustees, struggling daily to survive? Now they fast track a worthless bill to the House floor that adds insult to the injury of virtually killing HR 589 - a bill specifically designed to help the 99ers survive.

If there is $31 billion dollars available for HR 1745 then there is certainly $14 billion of that which has been available to pay for HR 589 all along. Congressional GOPers just prefer to let the 99ers die off and by the apparent lack of resistance on the part of millions of UI exhaustees - the 99ers are letting Washington do exactly that and without much of a fight.

WAKE UP AMERICA! An uneducated, under compensated work force of cheap labor and a fearful, sheepish population of “Have Nots” is just what the Republican agenda seeks to attain. They do not want smart, courageous people among the poor, as that might just mean massive unrest in rebellion and the end to the greedy, self-serving “cash machine” that is now the status quo in Congress. Sitting by and allowing the rich elite to ravage, pillage and plunder the poor even further is the equivalent to condoning such and NOT the American way. You reap what you sow - so be it!

[ If you like what I write please donate so I can keep on fighting for the 99ers! Thank You!]

SF Public Defender Jeff Adachi Has Video, Alledges SF Police Misconduct

SF Public Defender Jeff Adachi With Fernado Santana, a photo by zennie62 on Flickr.

In a press conference today, San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi showed a series of videos that, his office holds, shows the San Francisco Police Department conducting illegal searches and committing police brutality.

This is the second time in three months the San Francisco Public Defender has stepped forward with video showing SFPD misconduct. The first time resulted in a still-ongoing Federal investigation.

Mr. Adachi's department has provided this blogger with the videos, which were segmented. They are, as this is written, being put into sequential order to run as one video. That video will be ready this afternoon.

Adachi, along with his Chief Attorney, Matt Gonzalez, called for a zero-tolerance policy for police officers who commit perjury in San Francisco.

As to what happened, on December 30th, four San Francisco police officers - Ricardo Guerrero, Peter Richardson, Robert Sanchez, and Sergeant Kevin Healy - entered the residential hotel called The Jefferson Hotel. They were in plain clothes, without badges, and looked like, "thugs" to quote a person at the scene.

There, they illegally (without a warrant) searched the room of 48-year-old Fernando Santana, and in the process, they say, stole his property.

The officers claimed that crack cocaine was in his hands, outstretched, but the video shows Santana's hands in his pockets.

A bystander named "Joe," walked up to see what was going on. As the video shows, officers Ricardo Guerrero and Peter Richardson race to catch the man, after he realized he was going to be beaten up, as he believed. Remember, and he told this blogger, he did not know they were cops.

They caught him,and as the video shows, roughed him up and at one point choked him. They searches him and found nothing. The police report does not go into detail, calling it a brief "detention."

The main problem for the SFPD is explaining why Guerrero walked out of Santana's room with a black duffel bag. The bag was never booked as evidence.

Also, Guerrero found Santana not after "seeing him conducting a narcotics transaction" but after "casing the joint" that is the hotel, going from floor to floor, looking for trouble, armed with a residential master key that allows him to just walk into any room of the building.

This is the latest in a string of incidents where videos show a reality different that what is in the SF police reports.

Stay tuned.

Matt Gonsalez calls for zero tolerance of SFPD police misconduct

Jeff Adachi talks new SF Police misconduct video now

@YouTube must block use of the N-Word in the comments of videos. It is out of hand.

GOP Sits on $31 Billion While Letting 99ers Starve

According to Keep America at Work and World Report today, the GOP is sitting on $31 billion dollars of paid in UI money, while they continue to let the 99ers starve daily.

From the article:

“The stated reason that HR 589 or a Tier 5 unemployment extension could not be introduced on the House floor was that neither could be financed, just another lie in a long stream of lies. Dave Camp, who chairs the House Ways and Means Committee that is refusing to hear any legislation for unemployment extensions, has introduced his own bill, HR 1745 – Jobs, Opportunity, Benefits and Services (JOBS) Act of 2011.

Apparently there is $31 billion sitting in a bank account which is unemployment money we have paid in. Camp wants to take that money and turn it over to the states to use to give more tax cuts to the corporations that downsized our jobs. This is a diversion and misappropriation of public funds.

Camp is being supported by Human Resources Subcommittee Chairman Geoff Davis and Human Resources Subcommittee member Rick Berg. This group wants to steal more public monies to give to the filthy rich in a time when the filthy rich are making gluttonous profits while everyone else is going hungry in the cold.”

So the real question is how much more of this is hurting America willing to take, just sitting back idle or will the struggling millions finally get up and take a stand?

The article goes on to say:

“This country is ripe for revolution. Let’s do it. Let’s run these carpet baggers out of our country and our lives and restore our great Republic under our Constitution which will allow our free enterprise system to work again, and thus allow we the people to prosper again.”

How will things ever change for the better until good decent Americans stand up and say: ENOUGH! and do so out in public in huge massive demonstrations? But it must begin with the courageous few and spread like wildfire.

U-Cubed in a facebook posting today said of the GOP sponsored HR 1745: “The so-called "2011 Jobs Act" gives states permission to divert federal unemployment dollars to pay for things other than unemployment benefits. A better name for this bill would be the NO JOBS ACT..... Did we mention the so-called '2011 Jobs Act' would also deny unemployment benefits to workers who lack a high school diploma or GED?"

The Hill today also had a story on this ridiculous sham of a bill. From that article:

“The legislation, called the JOBS Act, would provide states the leeway to spend unemployment insurance funds on other things, including tax cuts.

Rep. John Larson (Conn.), the chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, said that with unemployment still soaring at 9 percent, the bill represents "an assault" on the millions of Americans who rely on that safety net.

"It doesn't make an awful lot of sense to throw them out in the cold and not have them be able to pay their taxes, buy their food, pay their rent," Larson told reporters in the Capitol. "When we peel away the veneer of what the proposal is — aka 'We're going to reduce the deficit' — really what we find here is an ending of the social compact between the people and their government."

House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) also took a shot at the proposal:

"They are referring to one of their bills on unemployment — to end benefits for long-term unemployment, taking away the assistance to 4 million people who are going to run out of unemployment benefits — they are calling that the JOBS Act," Hoyer said Tuesday. "I am very interested to see how eliminating unemployment insurance is going to be a jobs bill."

Well I sure am NOT interested in seeing anymore UI exhaustees suffering in the streets. All this bill is doing is wasting precious time that the 99ers and other hungry, homeless Americans do not have. This bill is nothing more than a diversion for the GOP to once again fool the people (who do not actually read what is in the legislation) into believing they are actually doing something - when all they ever really do in Congress is take vacations and not work at all for “We The People” even when in session.

Isn’t that the truth? But what we have all come to expect from the GOP, right? Face it folks, this Congressional session is a wash already and nothing will get done in Congress this year to make conditions better for anyone except America’s wealthy elite. Why is the American public at large so afraid to do something to stop the systematic extermination of the “Have nots”?

If you want to die a slow miserable death due to hunger and homelessness, then just keep doing the same thing: NOTHING! But, if you want to survive - you had better get up from your lethargy and do something, ANYTHING and fast!

[If you like what I write please donate so I can keep on fighting for the 99ers! Thank You!]