DOWNLOADS: (156)

PLAYS: (1218)

Embed

Leave it to Coultergeist to inject a little race baiting into the gun control debate on Hannity's show. She just can't stop herself: Coulter On Gun Violence: ‘If You Compare White Populations, We Have The Same Murder Rate As Belgium’:

Ann Coulter visited Sean Hannity‘s show Monday night to discuss President Obama‘s recent cabinet picks, as well as his possible actions on gun control. Coulter said she had just come back from England where they have “not bought into” the “diversity enthusiasm” of the States. “The liberals,” Coulter claimed, are “pushing and pushing and pushing” to have more mass murderers of color.

“If you compare white populations, we have the same murder rate as Belgium,” Coulter said. “So perhaps it’s not a gun problem, it’s a demographic problem.”

"Demographic problem," huh? Perhaps it's a poverty problem, Annie. I'm not sure where she's getting her statistics, but I imagine it's her usual source: pulled out of her rear end.

Never mind that the better part of these mass murderers we've seen lately were committed by white males, or that we might have more crime where most of the people actually live in the cities as opposed to rural areas, or in poverty-stricken inner cities as opposed to wealthy suburban areas. No, Ann would rather blame the homicide rates on the color of someone's skin and pretend that white people never commit murder. It's really disgusting, the things they'll resort to on Fox in order to carry water for the gun manufacturers and their lobbyists at the NRA.

DOWNLOADS: (362)

PLAYS: (5607)

Embed

I don't watch Piers Morgan's show too often since it's generally just a bunch of celebrity gossip that makes his predecessor, Larry King, look like he practiced serious journalism in comparison, but I caught some of his show following the tragic shooting in Aurora, Colorado this weekend. And I have to admit I'm really glad I heard someone say what Morgan did this Friday evening about when it's acceptable to talk about gun control.

If we don't talk about gun control after a tragedy like this one, it won't get talked about at all... period. And even if we do have a discussion now, both political parties are so beholden to or scared to death of the NRA, that neither of them are going to act unless there's finally enough pressure from enough voters that siding with the NRA is finally a losing proposition and is going to cost some politicians their seats. Given their huge war chest, that's a big hurdle to overcome. I'm not sure how many more people have to die by gun violence for that to finally become a reality.

Anyway, as I said, I'm no big fan of Piers Morgan, but it was nice to see for once the hypocrisy of not being allowed to talk about the root causes of this many deaths when we don't treat any other issue that way. People die and we want to know why and how to prevent it from happening. Sadly it seems even a Democratic member of Congress being shot wasn't enough to wake these people up that the laws need to be changed. Makes me wonder how many nut jobs out there have to be killing one of their own before enough is enough and Congress is willing to act. Apparently just one wasn't, which still just astounds me.

Transcript of Morgan going after the Cato hack below the fold.

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (95)

PLAYS: (233)

Embed

Florida special prosecutor Angela Corey gave a press conference this afternoon explaining the decision to charge Trayvon Martin's killer, George Zimmerman with 2nd degree murder. I'm relieved for the family of Martin that we finally got this first step in the process after the governor and prosecutor decided to take another look at the case. Let's hope it's also a first step toward seeing these so-called "stand your ground" laws repealed so another family doesn't have to experience anything like this again.

More of Corey's presser below the fold. Here's more from TPM on the charges and new developments in the case.

Prosecutor Charges George Zimmerman With 2nd-Degree Murder In Trayvon Martin Killing:

A special prosecutor in Florida on Wednesday charged George Zimmerman with second-degree murder for the killing of unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin in a case that has stoked racial tensions and drawn calls for justice from seemingly every corner of the nation.

At a news conference in Florida, prosecutor Angela Corey said Zimmerman was in custody, though she declined to say where. She said the decisions to charge Zimmerman and which specific charge to bring were not easy.

“It is the search for justice for Trayvon that brought us here to this moment,” Corey said. “I can tell you that we did not come to this decision lightly.”

After the announcement was made, Martin’s parents gave an emotional news conference, saying they were thankful for the arrest. Martin’s father, Tracy Martin, and mother, Sabrina Fulton, said they were grateful to see justice starting to move forward.

“We wanted nothing more, nothing less,” Fulton said. “We just wanted an arrest and we got it. And I say thank you, Lord. Thank you, Jesus.” [...]

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (497)

PLAYS: (5527)

Embed

I'm not sure what the Gun Owners of America's Larry Pratt thought he had to gain by going on the air with The Young Turk's Cenk Uygur, but he found himself getting blasted after defending George Zimmerman for murdering Trayvon Martin and claiming he had a right to shoot him dead.

Pratt's argument; that one witness claimed he saw Zimmerman on the ground being beaten up by the unarmed kid who was 100 pounds lighter than him and once the guy he was stalking was getting the better of him in a fight, he had the right to shoot him dead. Unbelievable. Needless to say, Uygur went off on him for promoting that level of vigilantism.

This guy is a real piece of work. The Southern Poverty Law Center has this on his background from a report they issued in 2001.

False Patriots - Profiles of 40 antigovernment leaders:

Eight Lanes Out
Larry Pratt, 58

Larry Pratt, a gun rights absolutist whose Gun Owners of America (GOA) has been described as "eight lanes to the right" of the National Rifle Association, may well be the person who brought the concept of citizen militias to the radical right.

In 1990, Pratt wrote a book, Armed People Victorious, based on his study of "citizen defense patrols" used in Guatemala and the Philippines against Communist rebels — patrols that came to be known as death squads for their murderous brutality.

Picturing these groups in rosy terms, Pratt advocated similar militias in the United States — an idea that finally caught on when he was invited for a meeting of 160 extremists, including many famous white supremacists, in 1992.

It was at that meeting, hosted in Colorado by white supremacist minister Pete Peters, that the contours of the militia movement were laid out.

Pratt, whose GOA has grown since its 1975 founding to some 150,000 members today, hit the headlines in a big way when his associations with Peters and other professional racists were revealed, convincing arch-conservative Pat Buchanan to eject him as a national co-chair of Buchanan's 1996 presidential campaign.

The same year, it emerged that Pratt was a contributing editor to a periodical of the anti-Semitic United Sovereigns of America, and that his GOA had donated money to a white supremacist attorney's group.

Pratt is today close to the extremist Constitution Party and its radical theology.

And here he was back in 2009 arguing on Hardball that we should have everyone packing heat at presidential events.

DOWNLOADS: (106)

PLAYS: (379)

Embed

January 07, 2010 CNN

Federal authorities have arrested two former Blackwater guards and charged them with murder in the deaths of two Afghans, the Associated Press reports.

Update at 2:41 p.m. ET: The AP says an indictment charges Justin Cannon, 27, and Chris Drotleff , 29, with second-degree murder, attempted murder and weapons charges. Both of them are in custody.

Both Cannon of Corpus Christi, Texas, and Drotleff of Virginia Beach, Va., told the AP recently that they were justified when they fired on a threatening vehicle last year in Kabul.

Blackwater, now known as Xe, fired both men after the shooting for failing to comply with the terms of their contract, the AP says.

DOWNLOADS: (331)

PLAYS: (4450)

Embed

September 12, 2009 CNN

DOWNLOADS: (178)

PLAYS: (356)

Embed

August 17, 2009 BBC World

DOWNLOADS: (1382)

PLAYS: (5350)

Embed

Keith talks to Jeremy Scahill about the latest revelations implicating Blackwater in murder and gun smuggling and for having a radical right, neo-crusader agenda in Iraq.

Olbermann: As horrific as all of this sounds, it's just part of what you describe in the piece today. Flesh it out for us.

Scahill: Well, I mean obviously to hear the term murder and Blackwater in the same sentence is no great surprise, particularly to people who've been following the history of this company. It's been at the center of some of the worst violence in Iraq. Killing civilians repeatedly. Five of its men are going to be tried on manslaughter charges for the Nisoor Square massacre in Baghdad in September of '07. Another one plead guilty. The Congress is investigating. The IRS is investigating. This is a scandal plagued company.

What is explosive about what's happened here, and you just went through some of the most explosive of these details is that you have two former Blackwater officials, I have learned from sources that John Doe #2 was actually in Blackwater management and was privy to some of the inner workings of the company.

Erik Prince, the owner of Blackwater remains the sole owner of the company no matter that he stepped down as CEO and the founder of the company. He micro-manages every aspect of Blackwater's operations and that's well known. On the Christian supremacists angle, let's remember that Erik Prince used Blackwater as a neo-crusader force and has from the beginning. This is a guy who comes from one of the power-house families of the radical religious right.

His father was a major bank roller, and gave the seed money to Gary Bauer to start The Family Research Council, James Dobson, Focus on the Family. And then we have his forced deployed in Iraq as part of a war against a Muslim nation that George Bush characterized as a crusade.

What we have here Keith is a confirmation from insiders at Blackwater that in face Erik Prince did have a neo-crusader agenda, and most explosively, may have murdered or facilitated the murder of individuals that were intending to or did cooperate in the investigation of Blackwater. This is deadly serious.

Scahill also appeared on Democracy Now to discuss Blackwater.

Continue reading »