The night Cincinnati City Councilman Sam Malone is accused of beating his son with a belt, he told the 14-year-old boy: "I'm not finished with you," according to Hamilton County court documents.
Malone, who has pleaded not guilty to a misdemeanor charge of domestic violence, was upset that his son was late to a checkpoint while on a school field trip at Paramount's Kings Island on May 13, according to the boy's statement to police.
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The hospital records detail bruising to his chest, arms, back and buttocks.
The boy told police he fell at one point and Malone continued to hit him.
"I pay for your school, and you bring home poor grades," Malone told his son during the beating, according to the boy's statement. "You're not paying attention."
When his father stopped hitting him, the boy told police Malone told him he wasn't finished with him, adding: "I'm going to whip the black off you."
Shortly after, Malone left his Walnut Hills home, and a boy who also lives with Malone and his son called 911.
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The domestic-violence charge was not the first for the councilman.
In 1991, he was charged with choking and pushing his mother. That charge was dismissed after he completed a counseling program.
Malone by the way, is black. You gotta wonder about a black man who tells is son he’ll “whip the black off you”. So now the trial begins…
After opening statements, Malone's 14-year-old son testified.
As the former councilman looked on, the teenager recounted what happened in their Walnut Hills home.
In the year before Malone's arrest, the teen said he and his father had had a rocky relationship because he was failing eighth grade. Then the boy missed the checkpoint, prompting his teacher to call Malone.
Malone's son testified that Malone was angry and told him to go upstairs and take his clothes off.
"He started whipping me with a belt, he had it wrapped double on his hand," the teenager said. "He kept on hitting me, and I fell over, and he kept on hitting me."
Asked by Murray to demonstrate how he tried to defend against the blows, the teen crossed his arms against his chest and tucked his head down.
"I was in pain, crying," the teenager said. "He hit me all over, on my back, arms, side, stomach, chest and my legs."
Malone, 35, was arrested after another boy living in his house in Walnut Hills called 911 and said the 14-year-old didn't feel safe there. Malone's son then got on the phone, crying and repeatedly asking the police dispatcher if he'd have to return to the house.
I don’t know what is the more obscene here…a grown man beating the crap out of a fourteen year old boy for missing a goddamn field trip checkpoint or the fact that beating a defenseless half naked child so badly they have to be taken to the hospital is only a misdemeanor in Ohio. That what it means to have red state family values is it?
As you might expect, Malone has a track record of political gay bashing, vehemently opposing the repeal of Cincinnati’s ban on gay rights laws. I wonder how many times he’s babbled that same sex marriage is harmful to children?
Life just isn’t sweet for these people unless they can beat the crap out somebody smaller and weaker then they are.
Gay-rights activists are blasting Don Imus and sidekick Bernard McGuirk as gay-bashers, Last week, when fellow MSNBC talker Chris Matthews asked Imus if he'd seen the cowboy love story "Brokeback Mountain," Imus sneered, "Why would I want to see that?" He added that McGuirk had his own name for the movie - a crude candy reference we'll skip. The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation called the "slurs" a "juvenile display of homophobia." MSNBC has apologized for the banter....
MATTHEWS (1/18/06): Have you gone to see it yet? I've seen everything else but that. I just...
IMUS: No, I haven't seen it. Why would I want to see that?
MATTHEWS: I don't know. No opinion on that. I haven't seen it either, so...
IMUS: So they were...it was out when I was in New Mexico and...it doesn't resonate with real cowboys who I know.
MATTHEWS: Yeah...
IMUS: But then, maybe there's stuff going on on the ranch that I don't know about. Not on my ranch, but you know...
MATTHEWS: Well, the wonderful Michael Savage, who's on 570 in DC, who shares a station with you at least, he calls it [laughter]...what's he call it?...he calls it Bare-back Mount-ing. That's his name for the movie.
IMUS: Of course, Bernard calls it Fudgepack Mountain...
That wonderful Michael Savage. Heh. Wonderful. Yes. Even more Tweety wonderfulness here and here. I used to think he was just a TV talking head idiot. But no…he’s a thug, just like the rest of them. A Bush base thug. And scratch a Bush base thug and you’ll find a bar stool bigot every fucking time. I guarantee it. When CNN started the first 24 hour cable news network it was hailed as a revolution in journalism. But what you have to realize about revolutions is that most of them end up becoming a tyranny of despots. CNN and MSNBC have been racing each other to the bottom of the gutter ever since Monica, and there is no bottom.
Baltimore Gas And Electric Company… We Charge even More For What You Don’t Use…
I don’t normally look at the utility bill until I’m ready to pay it. But after last month’s 200 plus dollar tab, mostly due to the stratospheric rise in natural gas prices recently, I was wondering how much less I spent during the last period, after having that trouble with my furnace. So I just took an advance peek at this month’s bill.
$320.
WTF!!! I was without heat for a week and a half last period, and the new furnace has been down intermittently ever since they installed it because it still isn’t working right (oh…more on that later I suppose…). And my bill goes up by a hundred dollars? It didn’t make sense. Then I noticed that the last period’s gas usage was Estimated. Not the electric mind you. The electric usage was marked Actual. Only the gas usage was Estimated.
They have never estimated me before. Never. I pay attention to these things. And I have every BGE bill stub from the day I moved into Casa del Garrett back in 2001. Yet the one month when my usage should have been off because of furnace trouble, they suddenly decide to estimate my usage. I’ve no idea what the algorithm is they use to estimate usage…I suspect it’s based on some sort of weighing against past usage verses temperatures for the period. But hell…who knows…? It’s just damn…fishy…that they decided now, of all billing cycles, to estimate my usage. And just the gas usage.
So I reckon I’ll be having a chat with them come Monday morning. I’ve never challenged a utility company bill before. Should be a totally delightful experience.
For the record, my Actual electric usage for the period amounted to about $80 worth. That was up from $43 last period and that makes sense because I was leaning on my electric space heaters for a non-trivial part of it. So the difference was about $37. My electric bill for December of 2004 was about $32. I reckon my space heaters cost me about $35 to $40 to heat the house with them for the 11 days I was without heat, plus the three days I had to take the new furnace out of service. Lets say $40 dollars worth of electricity for two weeks. That would make the space heaters cost about $80 to run for a month. Gas cost me $133 total last period, and about $166 total this one. I don’t think my clothes dryer and my gas range are a big part of that.
This is not a large house! It’s just a little fifteen-hundred square foot rowhouse for chrissakes. 300 plus dollar utility bills just don’t make sense for this little thing. Natural gas must suddenly be more precious per cubic foot then gold nowadays. So I’m going to try heating Casa del Garrett with the space heaters for a while, and see what that buys me. You don’t want to be running space heaters when you’re not home, but I can turn the heat down low so at least my water pipes don’t freeze, and then run the space heaters while I’m home. I’m going to do that for a whole billing period and see what the bill looks like then. 300 plus dollars a month to heat a fifteen hundred square foot house is too goddamn much.
If the space heaters work out cheaper, I might have an electrician come in next summer and put baseboard heaters in, as an alternative to the furnace. Then I could switch between them depending on which is more expensive. But I never thought I’d live to see the day electric heat was cheaper then natural gas.
As of 4:15 p.m. ET today, we have shut off comments on this blog indefinitely.
At its inception, the purpose of this blog was to open a dialogue about this site, the events of the day, the journalism of The Washington Post Company and other related issues. Among the things that we knew would be part of that discussion would be the news and opinion coming from the pages of The Washington Post and washingtonpost.com. We knew a lot of that discussion would be critical in nature. And we were fine with that. Great journalism companies need feedback from readers to stay sharp.
But there are things that we said we would not allow, including personal attacks, the use of profanity and hate speech. Because a significant number of folks who have posted in this blog have refused to follow any of those relatively simple rules, we've decided not to allow comments for the time being. It's a shame that it's come to this. Transparency and reasoned debate are crucial parts of the Web culture, and it's a disappointment to us that we have not been able to maintain a civil conversation, especially about issues that people feel strongly (and differently) about.
Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell has reportedly posted a comment on the Post's internal message board announcing that she has learned the following "lesson" from exchanges with Media Matters for America: "From now on, I don't reply." Howell's language did not make clear whether she meant that she would no longer reply to any criticism, or only to that registered by Media Matters.
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The "attack" to which Howell is apparently referring is a Media Matters item in which we quoted Howell's January 10 email to us, at her request. Howell claimed in that email that she had previously said that Post reporter Dafna Linzer "was giving the administration's point of view" in her January 4 article. In fact, Howell had previously said that Linzer "was simply giving the administration's point of view as well as others." But with regard to the claim in question, Linzer had not provided the point of view of "others" in her article -- an omission that constitutes the original basis of the entire dispute...
On the January 10 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, Glenn Beck called anti-war protester Cindy Sheehan "a pretty big prostitute," later amending, at the behest of his executive producer, Steve "Stu" Burguiere, that "tragedy pimp" would be "the most accurate description."
Beck referenced Sheehan during what he called a "search for the biggest prostitute," which, he said, sought to answer the question, "Who'll do anything for power or money?" The game initially pitted former Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss against Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean, Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), and suspended Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver Terrell Owens.
Beck, who claims that his radio show is "ranked as the 3rd most listened to talk show in America among Adults 25-54," was recently hired to host his own program on CNN Headline News.
Take a look at the photo of this guy on the Media Matters site and tell me he doesn’t look like the stereotypical schoolyard bully…the kind that is always threatening the smaller weaker kids for their lunch money, or shoving their faces into their locker doors and laughing.
MATTHEWS (1/18/06): Have you gone to see it yet? I've seen everything else but that. I just...
IMUS: No, I haven't seen it. Why would I want to see that?
MATTHEWS: I don't know. No opinion on that. I haven't seen it either, so...
IMUS: So they were...it was out when I was in New Mexico and...it doesn't resonate with real cowboys who I know.
MATTHEWS: Yeah...
IMUS: But then, maybe there's stuff going on on the ranch that I don't know about. Not on my ranch, but you know...
MATTHEWS: Well, the wonderful Michael Savage, who's on 570 in DC, who shares a station with you at least, he calls it [laughter]...what's he call it?...he calls it Bare-back Mount-ing. That's his name for the movie.
IMUS: Of course, Bernard calls it Fudgepack Mountain...
NEW YORK (AP) - MSNBC on Monday fired Michael Savage for anti-gay comments.
The popular radio talk show host who did a weekend TV show for the cable channel referred to an unidentified caller to his show Saturday as a "sodomite" and said he should "get AIDS and die."
"His comments were extremely inappropriate and the decision was an easy one," MSNBC spokesman Jeremy Gaines said.
Fudge packers. Tragedy pimps. Civil discourse. Without the commercial news media, where would it be? We bloggers should be ashamed of ourselves. Just…ashamed…
When Peterson Toscano came to Baltimore some months ago, he not only gave us his performance of Doin’ Time In The Homo No Mo Halfway House, and Queer 101, but also gave us some glimpses of a work in progress which he was calling then, The Re-Education Of George Bush. In the latter, a character named Marvin, an ex-gay man, leads Bush though a series of topics such as the economy, privilege, environmentalism, the Bible and humanity. What made it work for me was Peterson’s deft capture of the little nuances of character in a person like Marvin, who is from Brooklyn and a strong working class Bush supporter. I’ve met very few committed ex-gays in my life, and at any rate non that I can say for certain are still in that life. For a few moments in an old Baltimore church late last year, Peterson brought one to life for me. Seeing the excerpts from this work in progress made me hungry to watch the finished piece when it finally arrives.
Well…as it turns out… Marvin has a blog. An audio blog specifically, which is good because you really can’t get to know Marvin without hearing him. You can hear Marvin speak on various topics, and minister to those of us who have been blinded by the god of this world, here, and here, and here, and here. Marvin is a tad opinionated, but unlike some Bush bloggers, he welcomes your comments.
And I’m thinking…it would be nice if some of the other folks in Peterson’s shows would step forward with their own blogs. Chad should have his own audioblog too. Definitely. Oh…and the Minister from Doin’ Time…. Yes. And Tex. Oh foo…just give them all a blog.
And by the way…Peterson has a new schedule of performances up here, so check it out and see if he’s coming to your neighborhood. I’ve promised to write more about what I saw when he came to Baltimore, and I find that some of what I saw moved me so much I’m Still chewing on it. So many shows you go to just leave you the moment you walk out of the theater. Not Peterson’s, I guarantee it.
We don't remember too much from four years of high school Latin, but we do recall this phrase: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes -- Who will guard the guards themselves? Is there a way to say in Latin, "Who will be an ombudsman for the ombudsman?" Seriously -- to whom does one complain at the Washington Post when the person who is there to receive reader complaints defiantly gets it wrong?
We're referring, of course, to Sunday's piece by the Post's new ombudswoman, Deborah Howell, which ... ended up on a note that read like it was straight from the offices of the Republican National Committee. Here's what she wrote: "The second complaint is from Republicans, who say The Post purposely hasn't nailed any Democrats [in the Abramoff scandal]. Several stories, including one on June 3 by Jeffrey H. Birnbaum, a Post business reporter, have mentioned that a number of Democrats, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (Nev.) and Sen. Byron Dorgan (N.D.), have gotten Abramoff campaign money. "So far, Schmidt and Grimaldi say their reporting on the investigations hasn't put Democrats in the first tier of people being investigated. But stay tuned. This story is nowhere near over."
The first assertion is flat-out wrong. Dorgan and Reid could not have received "Abramoff campaign money," because as numerous articles and investigations have shown, Abramoff never donated a dime to any Democrat. Not one. That's not surprising, since Abramoff... is a Republican.
John Aravosis over at AmericaBlog posted a complete list of all the people Abramoff gave money too. There is not a single democrat among them. Not one. Not. One. Yet the Mainstream News Media persists in repeating the republican lie that democrats as well as republicans got money from Abramoff. What is so goddamn hard about telling the truth here?
The Zogby poll referenced by Atrios shows that Americans want Congress to consider impeaching President Bush if he wiretapped American citizens, by a margin of 52% to 43%. Yet the mainstream news media still regards impeachment as a partisan fringe issue.
Whilst browsing the comments on this post over at Washington Monthly (via a link from Atrios), regarding Bush Administration saber rattling on Iran’s nuclear program, I come across clues that there’s another catch-phrase making the wingnut rounds…
Your BDS is showing. If you don’t like Congress not asserting it’s powers over the President in war-time, elect a Dem majority. Otherwise, please kindly have a nice cup of STFU.
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When an American city is smoking, radioactive ruin, I will trot out the 100,000 BDS posts from 2003-2006 to show how liberals brought on the appeasement conditions that allowed it to happen. I will prominently display your posts the most and in largest font!
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1. BDS
2. America-hatred
3. Israel-hatred
Scratch a leftist and you’ll find all three. Rational thought, uh no.
Somebody finally asks…
Is “BDS” some new acronym being traded amongst the semi-literate online wingnuts, these days?
To which our little wingnut responds…
BDS is Bush Derangement Syndrome which 99.999% of liberals suffer from. It’s totally irrational hatred of George W. Bush which clouds all rational thought.
And speaking of rational thought…this is what he posted later. Remember, this is a thread about Bush administration saber rattling over Iran’s nuclear program…
I will agree that trying to impose our values on those religious idiots(Shia and Sunni) in Iraq is not going to work in the short-term. I’m for all out civil war, let a few million be killed and then we’ll side with the winner.
Bush Derangement Syndrome: Characterized by genocidal and sociopathic impulses, gross inability to determine right from wrong or distinguish between true and false. Caused by prolonged uncritical and unconditional support of the Bush Administration…
The most dramatic moment of the day came when the judge’s wife, Martha-Ann Bomgardner, who had been sitting behind him, left the hearing room in tears. She left when Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) was apologizing to Alito for his treatment by the opposition. Graham, who was present at a White House preparation session for Alito, mocked Democrats for their relentless questioning about the Princeton group by asking Alito rhetorically if he is "really a closet bigot." After Alito replied that he is "not any kind of a bigot," Graham continued: "Guilt by association is going to drive good men and women away from wanting to sit where you’re sitting…. Judge Alito, I am sorry that you’ve had to go through this. I am sorry that your family has had to sit here and listen to this." After a break, the judge escorted his wife back in. Conservatives seized on the incident to complain about Democratic "bullying," and said they plan to make the incident a cause celebre. "When will the media shame these people for their behavior?" Sean Rushton, executive director of the administration-friendly Committee for Justice, asked in a blast e-mail to journalists. The always-alert Creative Response Concepts, a conservative public relations firm, sent this bulletin: "Former Alito clerk Gary Rubman witnessed Mrs. Alito leaving her husband’s confirmation in tears and is available for interviews, along with other former Alito clerks who know her personally and are very upset about this development." In case that was too much trouble for the journalists, the firm also e-mailed out a statement from the Judicial Confirmation Network calling "for the abuse to stop."
Creative Response Concepts is the right wing media outfit that first began hyping the Swift Boat Veterans. Funny how they had that bulletin about Mrs. Scalito’s tears hitting the fax machines within moments of the event itself. Oh…and they’re available for interviews… Sympathy. You could almost have some for American fascists, when you realize that gestures of sympathy are all they can manage, the real thing being completely incomprehensible to them. When a lawyer for the family of a 10 year old girl who was strip searched without a warrant in a small Pennsylvania coal town in 2003, brought their case before the federal Third Circuit Court, Alito snappishly asked him, "Why do you keep bringing up the fact that this case involves the strip search of a 10-year-old child?" His defenders claim it was about his dedication to applying the law, not sympathy for one small brutalized child. Yes. Just so. The appeal to sympathy pisses them off because it exposes that empty void inside of them, where a human heart would otherwise be. We meet them first in school, then in adult life…the ones that always seem to have a blind spot when it comes to sympathy and compassion. The gentle pull and tug of daily human interaction is a frightening mystery to them. All their lives they take refuge in the structure and form of tradition and religion and law, because without them they’re utterly lost and rudderless in the human community. Over time they may learn how to fake it, but they hate having to do so at a moment’s notice because they have no reflex for it. It’s all an act, and one that as they get older, and achieve some measure of status and power, seems more and more pointless. But it can have it’s uses. Like tears for senators.
The American Civil Liberties Union says that a pastor who frequently speaks out against homosexuality and was arrested last week for propositioning a male police officer was charged in violation of the Supreme Court’s ruling on gay sex. The Rev. Lonnie Latham, 60, appeared briefly in court on Thursday on charges of lewd conduct, a misdemeanor. Latham was arrested January 3 after allegedly asking an undercover officer to join him in his hotel room for oral sex. Police impounded Latham’s 2005 Mercedes. (story) He was released on a $500 bond. As he was leaving jail he said: “I was set up. I was in the area pastoring to police.”
The ACLU is right of course. The police were conducting a prostitution sting in the area, and the lewd conduct charge was apparently laid on Latham because he never suggested that money change hands. But in that case his arrest can only be for propositioning the cop. That’s speech, and since Lawrence they can’t argue that he was propositioning the cop to commit a crime. This is the second state now that I know of, that seems to be flaunting the Supreme Court decision that overturned the sodomy laws. Virginia being the other. Back in the days after Brown v. Board of Education, some people, including lawmakers in the old Confederacy, were calling for “massive resistance” to racial integration. You can just see something similar brewing over Lawrence. How dare you say we have to treat homosexuals as if they were citizens too… And if president Junior is able to stack the Supreme Court with religious right nutcases like Scalito we may live to see a day when same sex couples are once again made into criminals. The Oklahoma District Attorney seems to think he’s merely being even handed about it…
Oklahoma County District Attorney Wes Lane said Oklahoma law prohibits a person from offering to engage in a lewd act “regardless of whether money is sought for or engaged.” “In this case, that is exactly what Mr. Latham is alleged to have done. To his misfortune, that individual was an Oklahoma City police officer,” Lane said.
…which is another way of saying the law criminalizes a certain kind of speech. But no…this is just a backdoor way of trying to keep people from having sex. I guess the theory is if they can’t ask, they don’t do. Next time you hear one of these rightwing crackpots bellyaching about liberals and nanny government, just laugh in their face.
If you’ve been following the GLBT news outlets lately, you’ve probably noticed that it’s been a particularly violent couple of months for sexual minorities world-wide. And it may have occured to you that violence toward sexual minorities has been getting a bit worse overall lately. It has. And there’s a reason for that.
MADISON, Wis. Wisconsin’s largest gay rights group has won 87-thousand dollars in legal bills over what a judge called a frivolous lawsuit.
The group Action Wisconsin won the award last week over a suit made by Louisiana pastor Grant Storms.
Storms claimed the group defamed him by saying he advocated the murder of gays at an anti-gay conference in Milwaukee in 2003.
Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Patricia McMahon says the group interpreted his remarks reasonably and the lawsuit lacked merit.
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According to a transcript of his speech, Storm said opponents of gay rights should take to the streets.
Then he mimicked the sound of gunfire, saying, quote, "Boom, boom, boom, boom. There’s twenty! Ca-ching.
There’s two things you need to pay attention to in this story. First, this is a pastor, not merely a man of God, but a Christian inciting people to go out and kill their neighbors. It is more then obscene, it’s the kind of thing that lit the ovens of the Holocaust. But there is more to it. Consider also, that when he got called on it he not only denied what he did, he took his accusers to court for slander. Now…you could just write that off as tactical indignation, but if you’re brave and feel a little like peeking down into the Pit today…google Grant Storms, peruse the record of his words and deeds, and consider that Storms knew exactly what he was doing when he mimicked the sound of gunfire, and that when he took Action Wisconsin to court, he genuinely believed that he had done no such thing. Orwell had a word for it: Doublethink.
Thought marked by the acceptance of gross contradictions and falsehoods, especially when used as a technique of self-indoctrination: "Doublethink…is a vast system of mental cheating (George Orwell).
This is the final step in renouncing your human identity. This is the end of the road. This is the fee prejudice requires. And you pay it up front, and you pay it willingly. Nobody goes into this with their eyes closed. At some point in his life, reality collided with Storms’ cheap conceits and in order for those conceits to win, reality had to loose. But reality never looses. Storms had to walk away from it, and in the end all he could do was walk away from his human identity instead. That’s what hate demands. You have to give it everything, and eventually you become nothing.
Yah. No…one reason I’ll likely not be going to see Brokeback Mountain is I’m not hugely interested in watching a film about a guy who lets it all slip away, however painfully trapped in his culture’s homophobia he might have been. I would ache to see Ennis’ heartbreak at the end, and I don’t need to be paying money for that ache. And at least I took my chances.
Why I Will Probably Never Make Much Doing Political Cartoons
Oh this is precious…you have to read this post from this post from Tom Tomorrow’s blog, if you’re an aspiring cartoonist, someone like me who is just starting to get their feet wet in the publishing world, or simply a fan of the art of political cartooning.
Now, the thing is, I’ve been down this road a number of times. And this is how it always plays out: a well-meaning art director contacts me. I submit a "rough (which in my case means a completely written cartoon with roughly sketched in art, but since the writing is the hardest part, there’s no way I’m getting anywhere near compensated for my time unless the piece runs — which is why I almost never accept work when the words "kill fee are involved). Even though I am given the impression of a very tight deadline, I won’t hear back for several days, possibly longer — which will leave me obsessively checking my email and mentally juggling my schedule. Then, after the well-meaning art director finally gets a chance to consult with the page’s editors, he or she will come back to me with the inevitable requests for "minor changes" which will somehow undermine, if not completely eviscerate, the integrity of the piece.
Go read the whole thing. You won’t believe what finally happened.
So I ended up googling it, but now I know what a "kill fee is…
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