Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Interracial couple sues Louisiana Judge Bardwell, who refused to marry them

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According to the Associated Press and the news website NOLA.com, Beth Humphrey and Terence McKay have filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against Louisiana Justice of the Peace Keith Bardwell of Tangipahoa Parish, which is 50 miles from New Orleans (and within the NFL's one-hour-from-stadium influence radius for the 2013 Super Bowl).

The lawsuit focuses on the emotional and financial damage Humphrey and McKay suffered from Judge Bardwell's actions. Bardwell has openly communicated his dislike for interracial marriage, although I really think he just doesn't like marriage between blacks and whites, and refused to resign, and has said on television he will not resign..



That folks is just an awful video of a person, or what the lake Richard Pryor would call "a cracker". By standing up for his racist views (which he says aren't racist), Keith Bardwell has become a hero to white supremacists around America, with White Supremacist News claiming that scripture "frowns" on mixed-marriages.

David Duke, who's website has to tell you he has a PhD (HA! HA! Bwahahaha!!) trots out the to-be-expected photo of O.J. Simpson and the late Nicole Brown Simpson, and writes his expected garbage views on interracial marriage.

Duke feels the World's closing in on him since the GOP selected it's first black head in Michael Steele, having recently went off the deep end he was already on about that development.

But I digress.

What white supremacists either don't get or aren't ready to understand because racism is a mental illness is that what Bardwell did was against the U.S. Constitution - in other words it was un-American - so McKay and Humphrey have a very good case. Law professors over at "Prison Planet" website, say that what Judge Bardwell did should not have happened.

I still think the NFL should weigh in here, and I'm surprised the NFL Players Association has not as of this writing taken a position on the matter. Many NFL players are in interracial marriages and so should be very concerned about this case and that the NFL has the 2013 Super Bowl in Louisiana.

The NFL should plan to move the Super Bowl unless the state takes hard action against Bardwell and changes its laws to effectively punish this kind of behavior. By doing nothing, Louisiana is backing the unconstitutional actions of a judge.

Stay tuned.

Glenn Beck fails to reject racist Louisiana Judge; follows racist guru

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Why Glenn Beck's around may be to remind us of just how stupid some Americans can be. Glenn Beck missed a great chance to show he wasn't what many expect him to be, racist, when he failed to make a statement against Louisiana Justice of the Peace Keith Bardwell, who will not marry blacks and whites in Louisiana in the year 2009.


Glenn Beck


As I've said..



..racism is a mental illness that must be pointed to and treated at every turn. It's harder to do with folks like Glenn Beck polluting the airwaves with a garbage bin full of trashy ideas.

There's no definitive, undeniable statement by Beck against what Bardwell did as of this writing, and his website just had a link to the Yahoo page on the news until even that was removed (but there's a cached version that leads to the Yahoo page).

But there's something else.

Glen Beck has a person others have refered to as his "guru" who for some wacko reason thought slavery basically was a good thing. (Where, for God's sake, do these people come from?  Not Earth.  They must be alien; and their behavior's questionably legal.)

I'm not kidding.

His name is W. Cleon Skousen, the man Salon explains changed Beck's life.

The late W. Cleon Skousen's, who died in 2006, is also a man for whom FBI head J. Edgar Hoover kept a 2,000 page file on, and referred to black children as "pickaninnies" and wildly claimed American slave owners were the "worst victims" of the slavery system.

Why the heck does Glen Beck back such a man with these retrograde beliefs? I have to agree with blogger Oliver Willis that Skousen's writings comes off as those from a crackpot, but even Willis can't put a finger on why Beck was drawn to him.

But what gets me about Beck is how he hides his own racial issues by calling those who aren't racist, racist for bring up that he's racist. Got that? It's the modern Couch Potato Conservative strategy. Michelle Malkin does it; so does Glenn Beck. And both have no idea what it means to be a real conservative, as Michelle thinks she does.

Of course she's wrong, but that's common for her blog. Still a cool person, just wrong most of the time.

The Classic Conservative knows and understands economics and law and is a policy wonk, believes in free markets but understands the need for government intervention, supports social liberalism and personal freedom but not at the expense of the civil rights of others, and is most of all careful with how tax payer dollars are spent and reluctant to take taxes unless they're necessary.

The Classic Conservative defends and encorages the development of free markets and democracy around the World, but not at the expense of the environment or the poor. The Classic Conservative insists that governments have economic development programs in place to build industry and employ its poorest people, and have reasonable social safety nets for them.  The Classic Conservative is pro-business. 

If you add all that up, Michelle Malkin and Glenn Beck are not Classic Conservatives. In fact, their ideas have contaminated the minds of innocent people who lack an intellectual set of guideposts to help them steer through the junk issued by these pundits.

I just provided one.

If you want to call a Classic Conservative  or "NeoLiberal" go ahead. It's the camp I fall into. But regardless it calls for a level of intellectual rigor that's totally devoid in the mindless rantings of Malkin, Beck, or Limbaugh.

Miley Cyrus with Timbaland in duet on "We Belong to the Music"

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Pop singer Miley Cyrus is with R and B singer Timbaland and it's the first song on his new album called "We Belong to the Music".


Timbaland

While Timbaland's attracted Justin Timberlake, Katy Perry and The Fray, Miley Cyrus singing with him is a coup for both performers. It will attract both the female teenage and male teenage audiences that would be split in a choice between Miley Cyrus and Timbaland, and with Cyrus' fanatical group of followers, result in an incredibly successful album and single. It's also clear that, with her Teen Choice Award performance safely behind her...



...and her Twitter account a thing of the past for now, Miley's expanding her range to R and B, and even rap. Meanwhile, Timbaland is reportedly wanting a "Twilight" look for his music video.   Why?  It's the teenage and young adult demographic and he's aggressively going after it.

Stay tuned; interesting news there.

Flickr down - Flickr up now after "Here thar be dragons"

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Earlier today the social networking photo website Flickr was down. The reason given for the problem impacting millions of users was that Flickr's engineers were in the middle of an upgrade. But what Flickr's to be commended for is timely updates to its users. Here's an example from the Flickr Forum post:

12:50 PM PDT: What happened? What happened earlier was that we deployed a change this morning, which introduced a bug and ended up overwhelming our WWW servers, then the API. Photos were still being served from our image farms. If they were embedded in blogs, those were still working, but if they were being displayed from something that called our API, like a slideshow or a badge, it would not. There is still some catching up to do with our offline task boxes, a couple of the WWW servers are still a little wonky, but otherwise things are back to speed. Again, we're sorry for the disruptions. :)

11:30 AM PDT: Sorry for the disruption to your Flickr-ing today (or tonight, wherever you may be!), we're still working out a few issues, you may not be getting some recent activity mails, and if we identify more issues, we'll post about them here, but we're getting things back for y'all.


That's called great service and transparency, or as much as one can expect on the Internet from a company of any kind. Now, if only we can get the California DMV to show such an amazing level of transparency, government will have truly served the people.

CBS News on Sahel Kazemi, Steve McNair and Leah Ignagni - new findings

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In a level of interest that should be applied to the California DMV, CBS News reporter Armen Keteyian looked at the investigative report by the Nashville Police (and which you can download here) and found what has been called an "inconsistency" in it. CBS is also trotting out new photos of the late Sahel Kazemi.

(WARNING: The police report is graphic.)

First to recap, Nashville Police concluded that former NFL Quarterback Steve McNair's girlfriend Sahel Kazemi shot and killed McNair on July 4th in her apartment in Nashville and that he had another girlfriend, Leah Ignagni.

Second, in the new investigation, the findings presented in the document explain that the police are still gathering evidence and are interested in any information that could change the report.




Armen Keteyian says that the report reveals a problem with the day when Nashville Police said Kazemi bought the gun that was claimed to have been used to kill McNair. At first they said it was bought on July 2nd during a two hour work absence, but according to The Sporting News blog, CBS found her work record, which showed that that leave of absence actually occured on July 1st.

But what's confusing is the police report has an interview with an Adrian Gilliam, who said he met and sold the gun to Kazemi on July 3rd. CBS, while having the timeline issue, lacks an interview with Gilliam to cross check their findings.

Thus, it's a great leap for CBS to question the entire police investigation on an inconsistency that's only half-explained.

As to Sahel Kazemi while CBS learned that she has $2,536.37 in her bank account, that info does not mean she did not think she had money problems. The police document contains this text message exchange I copied and pasted her for your information and which shows she was concerned about her finances, even to explain her need for help to Steve McNair:


Note: The below information was sourced from information provided by McNair’s cellular carrier, Sprint-Nextel, pursuant to subpoena. The text detail provided by Sprint-Nextel used the Eastern time zone (EDT). The times have been converted to the Central time zone (CDT) in this summary.
July 3, 2:03 a.m.
Kazemi: u love me
July 3, 2:04 a.m.
McNair: I love u baby
July 3, 2:09 a.m.
Kazemi: Im gonna have all of u soon
July 3, 2:24 a.m.
McNair: Yes u will
July 3, 8:14 a.m.
McNair: Hey are u up
9:56 a.m.
Kazemi: hi baby
9:56 a.m.
McNair: Where are you
9:57 a.m.
Kazemi: home
9:58 a.m.
McNair: Why your phone been off
9:59 a.m.
Kazemi: Im at the store tryin to fix it
10 a.m.
McNair: Did u stay at the condo because I came by there this morning
10
10:02 a.m.
Kazemi: yes but I have people comin to look at the furniture 2day
10:05 a.m.
Kazemi: Baby I might have a break down im so stressed
10:06 a.m.
McNair: Everything gonna be ok
10:12 a.m.
Kazemi: baby I need to pay the cell phone bills n the hospital.can u transfer 2000 to my acc
10:21 a.m.
Kazemi: baby I might need to go to the hospital.baby whats wrong w me i can hardly breath
10:27 a.m.
McNair: Where are u
10:28 a.m.
Kazemi: just got home
10:29 a.m.
McNair: Set down baby and rest for a minute. Drink some water.
10:30 a.m.
Kazemi: im tryin I just want this pain in my chest to go away
10:32 a.m.
McNair: You want me to come see about u
10:34 a.m.
Kazemi: im gonna try to sleep. If it dnt go away im goin to the hospital.
10:35 a.m.
McNair: Ok please let me know. I’m here if u need me
11:54 a.m.
11
McNair: Are u feeling better baby
3 p.m.
Kazemi: baby I wanna pay some of my bills b4 I go to wrk. All this bills n everythin else is stressin me out
3:53 p.m.
Kazemi: baby what are u doing
4 p.m.
McNair: At the pool with the kids. I got the guy transferring the money
4:01 p.m.
Kazemi: do u have my acc number
4:03 p.m.
McNair: Yes darling
4:04 p.m.
Kazemi: baby I have to be w u 2nite. I dnt care where
4:16 p.m.
Kazemi: tell me u gonna be w me
8:34 p.m.
Kazemi: baby where u gonna be at when i get off
8:50 p.m.
McNair: I’m at home now baby what time u get off
8:51 p.m.
Kazemi: round 11
9:10 p.m.
Kazemi: Where u gonna be at baby
9:15 p.m.
McNair: at home til the kids fall asleep
9:18 p.m. 12
Kazemi: k ill call u when I get off
10:23 p.m.
Kazemi: do u wanna get out n drink
10:35 p.m.
McNair: Probably not baby having trouble with the kids getting to sleep
10:45 p.m.
Kazemi: k im going to the condo in a min
10:59 p.m.
McNair: ok
11:28 p.m.
Kazemi: they asleep babe
11:34 p.m.
McNair: they are on the way
July 4, 12:38 a.m.
McNair: On my way
12:38 a.m.
Kazemi: k
12:48 a.m.
Kazemi: u want me to open the gate
12:52 a.m.
McNair: No open the front door
12:52 a.m.
(repeat) McNair: No open the front door
1:14 a.m.
Kazemi: its open
July 4, 2:23 a.m.*
Kazemi: im going to the store
13
14
*The 2:23 a.m. message, which was received by McNair’s phone at that time, appears to be oddly placed and out of sync when considered in totality with the other text messages. While McNair’s Blackberry at 2:23 a.m. on July 4 received the last text message originated by Kazemi’s cell phone, it is not known specifically when it originated. Inspection of Kazemi’s phone (a T-Mobile device) showed the text in question, but there was no reflection of the time of day it was sent. T-Mobile Subpoena Compliance Specialist Melanie Caldwell said neither she nor her associates had any idea why a message that was sent wouldn’t indicate a time and date. Ms. Caldwell was asked if there could be a delay of hours before a sent message was received. She said yes, such a delay could be caused by various issues, including server and technical problems. Thus, it is very possible that the message in question was actually sent hours earlier, was delayed due to technical or other issues, and was not received by McNair’s phone until 2:23 a.m.


For some reason this case is not going away. The matter of the gun purchase timeline and Kazemi's actual mental state, which does seem more stable than she was portrayed as before this week, are still up for questioning.

Leah Ignagni (photo) Steve McNair's other, other woman with him after Sahel Kazemi's DUI arrest



25-year old Leah Ignagni has been revealed as the "other, other" woman of former NFL Quarterback, the late Steve McNair. According to AOL Fanhouse' Tom Herrera, who's been all over this story like a cheap suit, Nashville Police brought out this information Monday night:

According to the case summary, Leah Ignagni confirmed she was dating McNair, who was killed on July 4 in a murder-suicide, and she recalled seeing a woman in a black Cadillac Escalade parked outside his condo two or three weeks before his murder.

 
Leah Ignagni 

Ignagni also said the woman followed her and that she later saw the Escalade circling her block or parked outside her apartment a week or two later. A 2007 black Escalade was co-registered both to Sahel Kazemi and McNair. This backs up earlier case details that stated Kazemi was suspicious of McNair being involved with someone else.


Ignagni told police that McNair visited her around 4 a.m. on July 2, just a couple of hours after Kazemi's DUI arrest, and then he spent the night at Ignagni's apartment before leaving early on July 3.

So Steve McNair went to Leah Ignagni's house after he got Sahel Kazemi out of jail - which seems to have set off the bells in Sahel Kazemi, who wound up murdering McNair then turning the gun on herself in a story that's just plain hard to blog about.

As for  Leah Ignagni (on Facebook here), she's still living in Nashville and started a new but not yet launched magazine called 61Five.  

It's hard to think that Steve McNair went out this way, which is why we prefer to remember his deeds on the field and for those in need.

Droid? What Droid? IPhone sales drive record Apple earnings

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Even with the way the California DMV's collecting money from the poor, It's hard to believe the Recession's so bad because we have the news that Apple Computer's reporting record earnings for its fiscal fourth quarter, earning 1.67 billion on $1.82 per share, up from the $1.26 per share and $1.14 billion profit it took in a year ago.

With all that, fears of the impact of the new phone called Droid should be lessened because much of Apple's money was made from iPhone and MacBook sales. But we'll find out starting October 30th, just right around the corner.