by Ross Rowley (Faithful Husband of Coleen; first posted on mnpACT! blog)
Today Ramsey County Attorney Susan Gaertner dismissed the counts charging the "RNC 8" with conspiracy to commit riot "in furtherance of terrorism". To quote the County Attorney 's press release: "We believe the terrorism charges would have been a distraction at trial. Dismissing those charges will help us focus on the core illegal conduct that occurred."
How time changes everything. The initial police conduct during the weekend prior to the RNC in Saint Paul , the pre-emptive raids on the "Welcoming Committee" convergence center and activists' houses yielded nothing to support Sheriff Fletcher's later professional law enforcement assessment that "this town would have been destroyed". Yet the pre-emptive (Bush Doctrine) arrests were made possible because of this very idea that "terrorism" was involved, that the Welcoming Committee was a group of such dangerous anarchist kids that the police needed to act before they actually did anything. As a rule, law enforcement waits until a person actually commits a crime before making an arrest. So if you break a window, you get charged with breaking a window. If you block an intersection, you get charged with blocking an intersection. It's the behavior-not the talk-that matters and normally evidence is needed identifying the crime and the culprit. In other words, the police don't usually act pre-emptively because they need some proof.
Pre-emptive aggression, whether conducted by the military or by law enforcement, is only possible and will only be accepted if we as a people are scared enough. And of course we had been scared of these "patchouli oiled protesters" for quite some time. Columnist Katherine Kersten, KTLK talk show host Chris Baker, and Sheriff Fletcher himself were very busy telling us about how violent the Republican National Convention could become. For as long as a year before the convention we had been hearing the drum beat of worst case scenarios, what happened in Seattle and why "we can't let it happen here". Let's just hand out the ax handles and machine guns and "mow'em down baby" was amongst radio host Baker's incitements, beginning five months before the RNC, in April 2008. We couldn't have rules when dealing with terrorists.
So what did these pre-emptive raids find? Very little. Were there stockpiles of weapons? No. Was there evidence that the activists could have effectively shut down the RNC? No. Even Sheriff Fletcher at the time was disappointed in the results. The Pioneer Press quoted the Sheriff as saying this: (what was discovered in the raids) "is only a portion of what is out there." Yes, indeed, to shut down the convention, one would certainly need more than what the Sheriff's men found in the houses they raided. Sheriff Fletcher was right. And did the police find more out there? No, not really. I think they could have found more bricks, rocks and nails of some sort at my house.
So, let's end where Susan Gaertner wants us to: the core illegal conduct. Where is it? The RNC 8 were in jail during the convention. They did nothing. The raids found nothing to suggest anywhere near a conspiracy to shut down the convention. The prosecutor's dismissal of charges involving furtherance of terrorism is a start. She ought to go a step further and dismiss all charges.
A h/t to Avidor, over at Dump Bachmann, who graciously gave permission to use his blogpost title. Here's what Avidor had to say:
"We're running out of rich people in this country."
That's what she said to KLTK's Chris Baker yesterday. Maybe Bachmann meant SHE is running out of rich people who donate money to her campaign such as this former rich guy.
Listen to Bachmann's wacky rant excerpted from the podcast:
Well, here's that podcast! Listen for yourself! (listener warning: if you took home a barfbag from your last airplane trip, go get it now....)
And she said that - "We're running out of rich people in this country" - at the 8:58 minute mark. But, before she said that, Bachmann said this:
Bachmann: I mean, if you think, ACORN - this is a group that's under Federal indictment...
Baker: Unbelievable
Bachmann: ...for voter fraud. ACORN - they've received a total of $53 million in direct Federal Grants since 1994. Do you know how much they're getting under this (the stimulus) bill?
Baker: Like $4 billion, I've heard.
Bachmann: $5 Billion.
Baker? $5 billion?
Bachmann: For ACORN.
Yep that's what Bachmann said, starting at the 4:11 minute mark.
If anyone can provide a link that the Stimulus Bill is doling out $5 BILLION dollars to ACORN, I'd like to see it*. But, since Bachmann said it, I'll take the rational view, and assume she's simply making that up. Of course, in the absence of a link to the contrary, "simply regurgitating spoon-fed GOPer talking points" would also be a reasonable assumption.
And she said a whole bunch of other stuff, too - listen to it yourself, and post what YOU think are the most outrageous things Michelle Bachmann said, on this episode of Life On Planet Denial the "Chris Baker Show."
* links to Medved, Drug Limpstick, Savage, Mitch Berg, Drudge, Talon News, NewsMax, Washington Times, et al do NOT count. I'm talking about links to CREDIBLE sources, folks.
Let's face it, things are not going very well for right-wing radio these days. Rush Limbaugh has been reduced to a national laughingstock, while Sean Hannity is best known for simply repeating talking points handed to him by the RNC. Where is the innovation? The fight? The good ol'-fashioned hatred that will sustain the righties into a new era?
Well, Minnesotans, puff your chests up with pride, because we've got a budding right-wing radio superstar right here in our own backyard, broadcasting daily at KTLK-FM.
You know KTLK as the radio station that made the head-scratching decision to abandon reasonable talk and go to an all-right-wing-nonsense-all-the-time format right before the collapse of the Republican party. With the aforementioned Limbaugh and Hannity, along with Jason "North Carolina is Infinitely Superior to Minnesota, What With its Low Taxes and Family Values, Which is Why I'm Getting the Hell Out of There and Coming Back to the Cities" Lewis, KTLK is the sort of radio dinosaur that would have been really popular in 1994, but now languishes down with KOOL-108 (the oldies station) in the ratings.
But Chris Baker aims to change all that. The new morning drive host and Texas import is making a name for himself nationally, and doing it the old-fashioned way: by saying crazy crap.
You may remember Baker from his previous assertion that basketball legend Earvin "Magic" Johnson had faked testing positive for HIV, because as everyone remembers, in the early 1990s nothing was cooler than pretending to have AIDS. Now, most radio hosts would kill to have just one crazy statement like that, driving the ratings and whipping up conservative resentment of multimillionaire basketball players who have spent their retirement building up the poorer areas of Los Angeles through investment. But not Chris! No, he's just getting started.
