Patterico's Pontifications

2/13/2007

Border Patrol Shooting Trial Transcripts Available

Filed under: Crime,General,Immigration — Patterico @ 10:10 pm



The trial transcripts in the Ramos/Compean case are available, here.

Have fun.

Thanks to commenter EricPWJohnson for the heads up.

I will have brief commentary in an update.

UPDATE: The transcripts do answer one question that was the source of debate between me and a pro-agent commenter calling himself retire05. retire05 had said “you have a jury that is not allowed to hear that immunity was given to Davila . . .”

I was highly skeptical and asked retire05:

Do you have a reliable link for the proposition that the jury did not get to hear that Davila got use immunity? If that’s true, it sounds like a major error by the judge, and I predict the case will be promptly reversed.

But I hope you have something better than an assumption or that confusing presentation by the Friends of the Border Patrol guy.

retire05 asked:

Why would the Union claim that the deal cut with Davila was “sealed” if it were not?

I will point out that in Volume VII, the very first question asked of the alleged drug smuggler by the defense attorney is about the immunity agreement:

12 Q. Mr. Aldrete, my name is Mary Stillinger. I represent
13 Ignacio Ramos. I would like to ask you first, you’re
14 testifying here under a grant of immunity. Is that correct?
15 A. Yes.

And indeed, the discussion of immunity goes on for pages. And a quick glance through some of the volumes of the transcripts shows that the issue of immunity came up time and time again in front of the jury.

Now, glancing through this section, I will offer this tidbit to the pro-agent crowd. There is a long discussion of the nature of the immunity agreement — use? transactional? a “weird hybrid”? — and it appears to culminate in this exchange:

8 MS. STILLINGER: I understand Ms. Kanof to be saying
9 that the hybrid is he’s getting transactional immunity, but
10 only for those events that he discloses. So if it turns out he
11 murdered somebody on that day, he doesn’t have immunity for
12 that. But he does have transactional immunity for every event
13 he told them about.
14 MS. KANOF: As long as he tells the truth. As long as
15 he tells the truth.

That ain’t what Jeffrey Sutton said! What he did say was this:

Prosecutors promised Aldrete that they would not use his truthful statements and testimony to prosecute him for the events that occurred on Feb. 17, 2005. . . . This type of “use immunity” does not give blanket immunity for any crimes he may have committed or may commit in the future. If there were other admissible evidence besides his own statements sufficient to convict him, he could be prosecuted for the offense he describes.

Unless another portion of the transcript cuts back on what I quoted above, this is simply inaccurate.

There are some disturbing questions swirling around this case — and I say that as someone who said, initially, that if what the U.S. Attorney said in his fact sheet is true, then the agents were properly convicted.

But it appears that at least part of his fact sheet was wrong. The accuracy of the rest of it remains to be seen.

I have a feeling that the transcripts should be a gold mine of information, for anyone with patience and interest — and who lacks an agenda. And speaking of those qualities . . .

DRJ? If you want to go through the transcripts and post summaries and/or commentary, I will set up an account for you, and you can put up as many posts as you like.

I would really love that.

What do you say?

Edwards’s Other Blogger Resigns

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 8:57 pm



The announcement is on her blog:

I regret to say that I have also resigned from the Edwards campaign. In spite of what was widely reported, I was not hired as a blogger, but a part-time technical advisor, which is the role I am vacating.

I would like to make very clear that the campaign did not push me out, nor was my resignation the back-end of some arrangement made last week. This was a decision I made, with the campaign’s reluctant support, because my remaining the focus of sustained ideological attacks was inevitably making me a liability to the campaign, and making me increasingly uncomfortable with my and my family’s level of exposure.

This part is interesting and sad:

There will be some who clamor to claim victory for my resignation, but I caution them that in doing so, they are tacitly accepting responsibility for those who have deluged my blog and my inbox with vitriol and veiled threats. It is not right-wing bloggers, nor people like Bill Donohue or Bill O’Reilly, who prompted nor deserve credit for my resignation, no matter how much they want it, but individuals who used public criticisms of me as an excuse to unleash frightening ugliness, the likes of which anyone with a modicum of respect for responsible discourse would denounce without hesitation.

I went into this knowing something about Amanda Marcotte, since she had been personally nasty to me, and had twisted my words in more than one online exchange. As for the Shakespeare’s Sister blogger: I have a very vague memory of her piling on me once, but it’s a memory so distant that it means nothing to me now. [UPDATE: Apparently I’m wrong about this, as she notes in the comments.] Other than that, I know nothing about her other than that she once used the term “Christofascists” — which, by itself, is (I think) a completely insufficient reason for anyone to oppose her working for Edwards. Maybe there was more, but I haven’t seen it.

I think it’s a shame that she’s not working for him, and a bigger shame that so many people apparently sent her ugly e-mails and comments. I do in fact denounce anything like that without hesitation, and I am going to send her a friendly e-mail of condolence. I have no idea how it will be received, but hopefully it will help, in some small way, to counterbalance the ugliness she has faced.

UPDATE: Firedoglake has examples of the kind of threats that Marcotte has been facing, and that McEwan probably faced as well. Here’s one disgusting example, which I’m going to censor just because, with all the profanity on this site lately, I’m going to end up getting blocked by some filters if I don’t tone it down:

Problem with women like you, you just need a good f*cking from a real man! Living in Texas myself, I know you haven’t found that real Texan yet. But once your liberal pro feminist ass gets a real good f*cking, you might see the light. Until then, enjoy your battery operated toys b/c most real men wouldn’t want to give you the f*cking you deserve b/c the sh*t that would come out of you ears.

The real message used no asterisks.

Appalling.

Naturally, Firedoglake tries to portray this as a uniquely right-wing phenomenon, which is ridiculous. Ask Michelle Malkin, who has been the target of plenty of ugly hate herself. But it is just outrageous that anyone should have to put up with this kind of ugliness, and people of conscience on both sides of the aisle should easily be able to agree on this.

Full Screencaps of the Rewritten Liberal Avenger Comment, Together with An Explanation of Why It’s Not Even Close to Funny

Filed under: Blogging Matters,General,Scum — Patterico @ 6:35 pm



This is an update to my post this morning about the obscene doctoring of a conservative’s comment by someone with hosting privileges at the Malkin-hating “Liberal Avenger” blog. As you may recall, one of the hosts of that site altered a comment left by Patterico reader carlitos, so that it appeared to contain lurid descriptions of sex acts between carlitos and his sister. (More about her below.) Here is a sample quote from the comment, as rewritten by the person with hosting privileges at Liberal Avenger (content warning):

For example, when my sister and I were in Junior high school we used to experiment sexually – you know, the usual stuff that horny, young brothers and sisters do: rimming, finger-fucking, dry humping, etc. We practically spent the entire summer between 7th and 8th grade in bed – it was great.

Lovely.

I included a screenshot of the comment, as it had been deleted by the time I posted. Liberal Avenger this morning accused me of making up the screenshot:

Yeah, I’m not too concerned about carlitos suing me because of something Patterico made up.

L.A. was a scootch more careful on his own site, saying in a comment that, because I cropped it in Paint so that it wouldn’t blow everyone’s margins, “the content of that image belongs to Patterico – not me.”

If that makes any sense to you, you must be a rabid leftist.

In any event, I have full, uncropped screenshots in the extended entry of this post.

Incredibly, Liberal Avenger ends his comment with this:

I’m closing this thread to commenting. Patterico – shame on you!

Shame on me?

In one of Carlitos’s early e-mails to me, he shared a fact that reveals how hurtful the rewritten comment was:

My only sister died almost 9 years ago this April. I’d rather not discuss details, but she is no longer with us.

He has now authorized me to share that fact with you, and wrote about it in a comment to my earlier post.

Shame on me, Liberal Avenger??

In the extended entry I post links and screenshots of the rewritten comment, including one taken by carlitos, and two taken by me. I will post them in their entirety, so it may blow your margins, but that should be okay if they’re safely tucked away in the extended entry:

(more…)

Liberal Avenger Site Rewrites Comment to Make It Look Like the Commenter Had Sex with His Sister

Filed under: Blogging Matters,General,Scum — Patterico @ 6:51 am



Longtime Patterico reader carlitos waded into the comments at the Malkin-hating Liberal Avenger web site recently. Commenting as “carlito,” he took on the liberals there for their unbelievably ridiculous use of an Allahpundit parody as evidence of his hate speech for Catholics. The discussion moved into abortion, and soon carlito found that one of his comments had been altered by one of the blog’s hosts, to add this disgusting passage (content warning):

Still, there are some valid and acceptable reasons to have abortions – reasons I think we can all agree with. For example, when my sister and I were in Junior high school we used to experiment sexually – you know, the usual stuff that horny, young brothers and sisters do: rimming, finger-fucking, dry humping, etc. We practically spent the entire summer between 7th and 8th grade in bed – it was great. Of course, by the end of the summer my sister was pregnant. Given our age and maturity levels, we knew she had to get an abortion. Fortunately at that time our state still recognized women’s health as an important social service and access to safe, inexpensive abortions was easy. To this day I wonder what our lives would have been like had my sister carried our baby to term.

I guess what I am saying is that, yes, I understand that there are RARE circumstances above and beyond the usual pregnancy-as-the-result-of-rape and endangers-the-life-of-the-mother that require abortions and should remain available.

I’m glad that I came here to discuss this with you folks. This conversation has forced me to really think this through and I feel far more comfortable with myself and with the subject in general. Thanks!

Nice, huh?

I have corresponded with carlito and he says that he did not write a word of this.

Understand clearly: this is not a comment left by another commenter spoofing carlito. carlito’s comment was edited by someone with posting privileges at Liberal Avenger.

Someone has partially come to their senses over there, and removed the comment. But I saved a screenshot for posterity:

(more…)


Powered by WordPress.

Page loaded in: 0.0714 secs.