Prince (born Prince Rogers Nelson, June 7, 1958) is a singer, songwriter, musician, and actor. He has been known under the unpronounceable symbol 
, which he used between 1993 and 2000. During that period he was frequently referred to in the media as “The Artist Formerly Known as Prince“, often abbreviated to “TAFKAP“, or simply “The Artist“[1]
According to Robert Larsen in his book, History of Rock and Roll, Prince is “one of the most talented and commercially successful pop musicians of the last 20 years”, producing ten platinum albums and thirty Top 40 singles during his career.[2] Prince founded his own recording studio and label, writing, self-producing and playing most, or all, of the instruments on his recordings.[2] In addition, Prince has been a “talent promoter” for the careers of Sheila E., Carmen Electra, The Time and Vanity 6,[2] and has written songs for these artists and others (including Chaka Khan, The Bangles, and Sinéad O’Connor).
Prince also has several hundred unreleased songs in his “vault”.[3][4] He has won seven Grammy Awards,[5] a Golden Globe,[6] and an Academy Award.[7] He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004, the first year he was eligible.[8]
African American Reports: Herman Cain is the biggest bigot in the race.
http://aareports.com/2011/07/herman-cain-is-biggest-bigot-in-race.html
Herman Cain’s black ass need to be kicked to the moon. He’s a nasty vile racist bigot!
Think Progress:9 Republicans vote against Cap, Cut + Balance: Bachmann, Broun, Canseco, DesJarlais, Griffith, W.Jones, Mack, Paul, Rohrabacher
Think Progress: 5 Democrats vote for radical Cap, Cut + Balance plan: Boren OK, Cooper TN, Matheson UT, McIntyre NC and Shuler NC
these votes were pre-planned by the parties.
The 5 Dems that voted for this bullshit need to be run out of town!
I read where John Boehner asked the President to drop the veto threat! Alcohol must have killed some of Boehner’s brain cells!
Boehner SCURRED! He’s weak, ineffectual, impotent, and thinks he can tell PBO what to do? NAW som; the baggers have got you by the balls. I hope they squeeze’m off!
Yes they are planned!!
I see Ed had on Hamsher tonight. They showed their asses. Obama’s taking our big 3! WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!
It’s the Duck Dodge and Defeat plan!!
@Breaking News: Update: ‘Cut, Cap & Balance’ passes U.S. House by a vote of 234-190 – NBC News
Political Animal
Blog
July 19, 2011 3:00 PM
Obama tries to box in House GOP
By Steve Benen
President Obama stopped by the White House briefing room, offering an update on the status of the debt-ceiling process. I’ve seen some reports suggesting the president endorsed the Gang of Six’s compromise, but that’s not quite what he said, and it seems to miss the point of Obama’s comments.
In general, the president stuck to generalities, saying he’s seem “some progress” of late, and dismissing the “Cut, Cap, and Balance” charade out of hand.
Specifically on the Gang of Six, however, Obama said their apparent agreement is “broadly consistent” with the approach he’s pushed, and praised it for touching all the bases — it cuts spending while increasing revenues, as part of a larger, significant debt-reduction package. He added that he’d still need more details before evaluating it fully, but added, “I think that we’re on the same playing field. “
This, however, is what struck me as key:
“So here’s where we stand. We have a Democratic President and administration that is prepared to sign a tough package that includes both spending cuts, modifications to Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare that would strengthen those systems and allow them to move forward, and would include a revenue component. We now have a bipartisan group of senators who agree with that balanced approach. And we’ve got the American people who agree with that balanced approach.”
The president wasn’t speaking from prepared remarks, so it’s possible this came together by accident, but it sounded to me like Obama was intentionally boxing in House Republicans. The point wasn’t to endorse the Gang of Six, per se, so much as to use the Gang of Six to make a larger point: the White House wants a balanced approach, a bipartisan group in the Senate wants a balanced approach, and the American mainstream wants a balanced approach. Now all we need is for the House majority to wake up and smell reality.
That, of course, won’t happen, but the point is to place the burden where it belongs — on those who are being irresponsible.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2011_07/obama_tries_to_box_in_house_go030966.php
The GOP is GOING.DOWN.
HA HA HA time and time again, the GOP gets CLOWNED by PBO. It’s coming.
Tee Hee!! Love that sign SG!!
The Raw Story: Walter Reed Army hospital to close its doors http://cot.ag/pNJZpv
News Corp’s U.S. problems
Did ethics staff taint Maxine Waters probe?
By JOHN BRESNAHAN | 7/18/11 4:40 AM EDT
The former staff director of the House Ethics Committee accused two top committee lawyers last year of secretly communicating with Republicans on the panel regarding the investigations of Democratic Reps. Maxine Waters and Charles Rangel, raising concerns over whether the long-running inquiries were compromised by key staffers, according to internal committee documents obtained by POLITICO.
Blake Chisam, the former staff director, wrote in a late 2010 memo to then-chairwoman Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) that attorneys Morgan Kim and Stacy Sovereign improperly shared information in the Rangel case with Republicans on the committee — a move that “would have so tainted the proceedings that there would have been no option but to move to dismiss.” The Ethics Committee places strict limits on the sharing of evidence during “trials” for lawmakers; committee members act as prosecutors and lawmakers play the role of a jury.
While the Rangel case is over — he was censured by the full House in December 2010 — the allegations about Kim and Sovereign could have a major impact as the Ethics Committee prepares to meet on the Waters case early this week.
Kim, who was the lead attorney on the investigation into Waters’s finances, and Sovereign were suspended from their jobs late last year amid questions about their handling of the case. In addition, Waters’s case was effectively put on hold.
Now Waters is using the allegations about staff wrongdoing to ask for her case to be dismissed altogether. Some ethics experts agree and believe this could derail the Waters case or create the need for the Ethics Committee to hire an independent counsel to take over the matter.
Kim and Sovereign, former federal prosecutors, no longer work on the Ethics Committee.
Richard Sauber, an attorney for Kim and Sovereign, rejected Chisam’s assessment of his clients’ actions, countering that Kim and Sovereign “were used as scapegoats by the chief of staff [Chisam] and former [chairwoman Lofgren] to cover up the implosion inside the committee due to partisan infighting” among committee members.
Chisam’s memo is among hundreds of pages of confidential Ethics Committee emails, memos and notes obtained by POLITICO involving the high-profile investigations into Waters and Rangel that for the first time lay out the details of the allegations surrounding the suspensions of Kim and Sovereign.
The documents also paint a picture of a committee — evenly divided between the two parties — riven with partisan plots, petty jealousies and competing agendas. Indeed, the committee charged with policing the entire House seemed at times unable to enforce the rules of its own panel.
The Ethics Committee would not comment for this article.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0711/59225.html#ixzz1Sb6vb1ZQ
BWA HA HA HA Walters TAINT going down wtihout taking a few folks with her. Don’t mess we me suckas!
WATCH IT SUCKA!
Watchdogs: Bonner Has To Go To Fix Broken House Ethics System
Ethics watchdogs are calling on Rep. Jo Bonner (R-AL) to step down as chairman of the House Ethics Committee — at least temporarily — for his role in the ongoing turmoil over Rep. Maxine Waters’ (D-CA) case.
“I think there needs to be an investigation into the whole matter, including Mr. Bonner’s role and that Mr. Bonner should step aside during the course of that investigation,” Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told TPM Tuesday. “If Mr. Bonner is found to have broken the committee’s rules, he should be sanctioned by the full House.”
Another ethics expert said the partisan infighting and charges of prosecutorial misconduct surrounding the Waters case should force Congressional leaders to fundamentally restructure the ethics system and hand authority for policing members conduct over to an independent, non-partisan entity.
Indeed, the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE), a board comprised of mostly former members, first investigated the Waters’ case without incident and forwarded its recommendations to the full committee for further review. It was only when the matter hit the full ethics panel that partisan sniping and charges and counter charges of unprofessional behavior ensued.
“The prosecutorial misconduct – which appears to be driven by members and staff alike for simple partisan gamesmanship, even by Chairman Bonner – is the very reason why both the House and Senate ethics committees need to be fundamentally restructured into independent agencies, in which nonpartisan people outside of Congress sit in judgment,” said Public Citizen’s Craig Holman.
“Bonner and his staff have shown much the same tendency to exploit the ethics committee for partisan gain, as we used to see under [former Speaker] Newt Gingrich and [ex-Majority Leader] Tom DeLay. Bonner has lost the credibility to lead the ethics committee, especially in the case of Maxine Waters, and by all means should recuse himself from this affair.”
After all the partisan dysfunction on the panel in the last year, Democracy 21’s Fred Wertheimer said the House has no choice but to strengthen the OCE and give it more power to police members behavior.
“The House Speaker and House Democratic Leader need to establish a means for determining what happened in the Ethics Committee and what additional changes are now needed to fix the House ethics enforcement process. The issue of strengthening the role of the Office of Congressional Ethics must be considered in this examination.”
Neither the House Ethics Committee nor Speaker John Boehner’s (R-OH) office returned a request for comment about allegations that Bonner engaged in improper communication with attorneys on the panel last year while he was still its ranking member.
An unprecedented leak of internal ethics documents from last fall provide new details about Bonner’s role in the alleged bungling of the ethics committee’s case against Waters. The scores of Ethics Committee e-mails and memos, reported by Politico Monday with links to the documents, paint a picture of a committee consumed by partisan dysfunction and accusations of professional misconduct surrounding Waters’ case.
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/07/watchdogs_bonner_has_to_go_to_fix_broken_ethics_sy.php
Allen West tirade: Wasserman-Schultz ‘vile…despicable…not a Lady’
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0711/Allen_West_tirade_WassermanSchultz_viledespicablenot_a_Lady.html?showall
Florida GOP Congressman Allen West this afternoon dispatched a scathing personal email to Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, calling her “vile, unprofessional ,and despicable,” “a coward,” “characterless,” and “not a Lady,” and demanding that she “shut the heck up.”
Wasserman-Schultz, in whose neighboring South Florida district West lives, provoked his tirade with remarks after he left the House floor today, in which she responded — without naming him — to the Tea Party freshman’s support for “Cut, Cap, and Balance” legislation to raise the debt ceiling.
“The gentleman from Florida. who represents thousands of Medicare beneficiaries, as do I, is supportive of this plan that would increase costs for Medicare beneficiaries, unbelievable from a Member from South Florida,” Wasserman-Schultz said, saying the legislation “slashes Medicaid and critical investments essential to winning the future in favor of protecting tax breaks for Big Oil, millionaires, and companies who ship American jobs overseas.”
Her criticism of the legislation — more or less what most Democrats are saying today — provoked a furious response. West copied members of House Republican and Democratic leadership on the email, as well as his chief-of-staff, Jonathan Blyth.
West is a disrespectful bootlicking hankyhead POS! Don’t hate because Wassermann Shultz KICKED your ass! If you can’t take the heat, stay out of fk kitchen!
Yes she will..kick him up under the well of the House! What a jerk!
BWA HA HA HA HA HA
Debbie stripped his balls and rendered him impotent! Go Debbie! Go!
slave catching coon
We need to find out who funds his ass! And blast him!
@Breaking News:Attorney General Eric Holder open to meeting Sept. 11 families on hacking – @Reuters http://reut.rs/rjr5Ft
A successful day of action for Democrats
OBAMA/BIDEN 2012 Boost on the ground. Thanks folks!
DemsRapidResponse:
DNC Chair on House Floor in Opposition to Cut, Cap and Balance
Go DWS! Keep hitting back hard!
Tell the TRUTH, Debbie!
@Breaking News: Update on hacking probe: DOJ says 14 arrested in US for cyberattack on PayPal; 2 others on cyber-related charges http://1.usa.gov/pZVwZU
Mon Jul 18, 2011 at 08:39 PM PDT.
The Heritage Foundation sez: You aren’t poor!+*
Do you worry about Americans living in poverty? Think that perhaps taxes should be raised on the ultra-wealthy in order to help those destroyed by the recession they created?
Do you have any sympathy and empathy for your fellow citizen in trouble?
The Heritage Foundation to the rescue! Today they published a study to show how the poor are actually livin’ large thanks to their ‘amenities’.
.
The study can be found here.
The opening sentence gives one a flavor of the entire piece:
Each year for the past two decades, the U.S. Census Bureau has reported that over 30 million Americans were living in “poverty.” In recent years, the Census has reported that one in seven Americans are poor. But what does it mean to be “poor” in America? How poor are America’s poor?
Isn’t it cute how they put poverty and poor in quotation marks? Because, as they’re about to prove, the poor aren’t poor.
Poor families certainly struggle to make ends meet, but in most cases, they are struggling to pay for air conditioning and the cable TV bill as well as to put food on the table. Their living standards are far different from the images of dire deprivation promoted by activists and the mainstream media.
How dare they have air conditioning, particularly when temperatures around the country now are killing people who are without it!
The Heritage Foundation then gives data on poor households who have such luxuries as a refrigerator, a stove, a ceiling fan, a coffee pot and so on. I have news for the silver-spoon trust funders who work at the HF: even the most wretched slum apartment generally has a refrigerator and a stove. Some might even offer a ceiling fan. The Heritage Foundation apparently won’t be happy until we’re all living under bridges, although then they’ll say we don’t have it bad as long as we have a blanket.
Anyway, the Heritage Foundation takes their list of ‘amenities’ and scores it against poor households. You see, a $10 coffee pot from Dollar General and a $20 television from Goodwill means that you aren’t suffering enough for our overlords – you’re actually very well off compared to the poor 100 years ago. You can’t make this shit up! A coffee pot is actually considered some kind of luxury item to the HF and it’s scored against the poor.
So once they’ve ‘proven’ that the poor aren’t actually poor because their Section 8 housing has a refrigerator, they do make a concession:
Of course, the typical poor family could have a host of modern conveniences and still live in dilapidated, overcrowded housing. However, data from other government surveys show that this is not the case.[19] Poor Americans are well housed and rarely overcrowded.[20] In fact, the houses and apartments of America’s poor are quite spacious by international standards. The typical poor American has considerably more living space than does the average European.[21]
So, they have spacious, comfortable housing and they aren’t hungry, either!
On average, the poor are well nourished. The average consumption of protein, vitamins, and minerals is virtually the same for poor and middle-class children. In most cases, it is well above recommended norms. Poor children actually consume more meat than higher-income children consume, and their protein intake averages 100 percent above recommended levels. In fact, most poor children are super-nourished and grow up to be, on average, one inch taller and 10 pounds heavier than the GIs who stormed the beaches of Normandy in World War II.[24]
The entire argument for saying that the poor are livin’ large is that in a time of terrible, terrible deficits maybe we’re doing too much for them, because “the overwhelming majority of poor households do not experience any form of physical deprivation”…because they have a coffee pot!
I know someone who lives in a broken-down RV in Oklahoma. The plumbing is bad and it doesn’t have running water. She has it parked in an RV park that offers cable and Internet for the modest rental fee, and according to the Heritage Foundation she’s living a life of luxury, even though she’s living in a 25 year old RV without running water.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/07/18/996067/-The-Heritage-Foundation-sez:-You-arent-poor!?via=siderec
Political AnimalBlog
July 19, 2011 3:45 PM
How not to respond to legitimate questions
By Steve Benen
As you’ve probably heard, former aides to Republican presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann have said she suffers from migraines that could, on occasion, “incapacitate” her “for days at a time.” In response to reporters’ questions today, the right-wing congresswoman said her headaches are controlled by medication and don’t interfere with her official duties.
Reasonable people can disagree about the relevance of this story, but given the scrutiny modern presidential candidates are subjected to, if a presidential hopeful has an ailment that occasionally leaves her “incapacitated,” it’s probably fair to ask for some relevant details. Bachmann said medication has this under control, and I have no reason to believe otherwise.
At this point, I’d be inclined to move on, were it not for the way in which the Bachmann campaign responded to reporters’ inquiries today.
At at event in South Carolina, ABC’s Brian Ross asked Bachmann if her ailment ever led her to miss a congressional vote. She refused to answer. As Michael Crowley reported, matters quickly took a turn for the worse.
Ross dashed after Bachmann, repeatedly asking whether she had ever missed a House vote due to a migraine. She ignored him. Ross pursued her into a parking area behind the stage. Her aides grew alarmed. When Ross made a beeline for the white SUV waiting to carry Bachmann away, two Bachmann men pounced on him, grabbing and pushing him multiple times with what looked to me like unusual force. In fact, I have never seen a reporter treated so roughly at a campaign event, especially not a presidential one. Ross was finally able to break away and lob his question at Bachmann one more time, but she ignored him again.
Afterward, I asked Ross — a hard-nosed pro who nevertheless seemed slightly shaken — whether he’d ever been treated so roughly. “A few times,” he told me. “Mostly by mafia people.”
In general, I don’t much care about the headaches. If the condition is managed through medication, this would rank at the bottom of my list of concerns about Bachmann’s political ambitions. It’s a legitimate area of inquiry, but the candidate seems to have a perfectly reasonable answer. Fine.
What isn’t fine is roughing up a journalist because he’s asking a question the candidate doesn’t like.
As Crowley concluded, “Running for President, at least in its early retail stage, requires a willingness to answer inconvenient questions in settings more chaotic and unpredictable than the cable television interviews to which she is accustomed. The trail is a messy place, reporters will swarm you, it’s definitely not always fun — and, well, it’s enough to give even a seasoned candidate a migraine. The question raised this afternoon is whether Bachmann is ready for it.”
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2011_07/how_not_to_respond_to_legitima030967.php
Little white lies: Agnok Lueth adopts ‘Daniel McClean’ on his CV to try to get a fair go
A SUDANESE man who has applied unsuccessfully for more than 1000 jobs has resorted to using a fake Anglo name on his resume in a desperate attempt to get work.
Former refugee Agnok Lueth, 23, who fled war-torn Sudan for Melbourne in 2004, created the resume alias “Daniel McClean” because he believed Australian employers were unwilling to give him a fair go under his real name.
Mr Lueth sent out hundreds of resumes for jobs he was qualified for, but only received callbacks on applications with the fake names.
Of the six applications with the fake name, he got five callbacks.
The Swinburne University biomedicine and commerce double degree student can speak three languages, has a favourable work history and volunteered for three years for an Australian aid organisation.
Despite meeting the job criteria for positions as a waiter, shop assistant, call centre worker and bank teller, Mr Lueth told mX he felt overlooked by employers.
I did a test to see if it was an experience problem or something more,” he said.
“I sent six resumes with my qualifications but used a different name, and I was surprised at how quickly I heard back from five of the companies for interview requests.”
Mr Lueth could not say why the five calls did not lead to a job interview.
He said one employer only asked him two questions.
The Australian Human Rights Commission’s Graeme Innes said there was a growing trend of immigrants adopting western names in the hope it would help them get hired.
“Unfortunately, there are elements of racism in our community and there are definitely people in Australia who make employment decisions on a racist bias,” he said.
“We like to call ourselves a tolerant society, but this happens a lot more often than we think.”
Since university timetable clashes forced Mr Lueth into the job hunt in 2009, he has relied on Centrelink payments and a Smith Family scholarship.
“Sometimes I just feel like giving up,” he said.
“The Sudanese community is thankful for all the opportunities we’re given in Australia, but we have something to make this nation defined by the strength of its diversity.”
Smith Family Learning for Life team leader Anne Marmion said Lueth’s efforts to secure a job had been “massive”.
“When a young person has to change their name because they’re discriminated against, it’s an indication of bias and prejudice in our society and a fear of those who are different,” she said.
Read more: http://www.news.com.au/business/business-smarts/little-white-lies-agnok-lueth-adopts-daniel-mcclean-on-his-cv-to-try-to-get-a-fair-go/story-e6frfm9r-1226097072346#ixzz1SaPG3Wsp
I can never look at Prince without thinking about the Dave Chappelle skit with Charlie Murphy.
that was some funny —-
LMBAO That was pure comedy gold.
Here’s teh clip: http://www.pp2g.tv/vYHFxZHY_.aspx
Wendell Pierce at the White House
By JULIE MASON | 07/19/11 3:39 PM
Actor Wendell Pierce was just taking a break from a summit on Gulf Coast redevelopment Tuesday when he swung by the White House — and caught a surprise appearance from President Obama.
Pierce, a guest of April Ryan from American Urban Radio Networks, stood on the sidelines in the briefing room for Obama’s last-minute appearance to talk about progress in the debt limit negotiations.
“I met him once, on a rope line,” Pierce said of Obama. Sadly, Bunk did not have McNulty in tow.
http://www.politico.com/politico44/perm/0711/thats_bunk_877fe0ea-f0a1-48c9-a328-0d949247b251.html
Rep. Peter King Announces Third Islamic Radicalization Hearings
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/19/rep-peter-islamic-radicalization_n_903600.html#comments
Peter King, the controversial Republican congressman from New York who chairs the House Committee on Homeland Security, announced Tuesday that he will hold a third hearing on radicalization among Muslim-Americans next week.
While King’s first hearing in March focused on Islamic radicalization in general and his second focused on radicalization in prisons, the July 27 hearing will be about al Shabaab, a Somalia-based terrorist organization that has made headlines for recruiting Somali-Americans in the Midwest.
In a press release released on Tuesday, King said:
“At this hearing, the third in a series, we will examine Somalia-based terrorist organization al-Shabaab’s ongoing recruitment, radicalization, and training of young Muslim-Americans and al-Shabaab’s linking up with al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).
“In Minnesota, Ohio, and other states, dozens of young Muslim males have been recruited, radicalized, and then taken from their communities for overseas terrorist training by al-Shabaab. In a number of cases, the men – including both Somali-Americans and other converts — have ended up carrying out suicide bombings or have otherwise been killed, often without their families even knowing where their sons have gone. There has not been sufficient cooperation from mosque leaders. In at least one instance, a Minnesota imam told the desperate family of a missing young man not to cooperate with the FBI.
“There are growing concerns that al-Shabaab in Somalia is linking up with al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in Yemen to better train these radicalized young men in order to attack Americans around the world, or potentially shift their focus to attacking our homeland.
“This coordinated and ongoing recruitment and radicalization of young Muslim men in the U.S. is a serious and growing threat to our homeland security and simply cannot be ignored.”
Please folks…vote this hateful mofo out of office. Enough of the witch hunt bullshit!
I despise King and his antics.
But I can vouch for the hot bed of funding in MN by Somalians of terrorists.
ThinkProgress: Allen West: Obama supporters are “a threat to the gene pool.” http://bit.ly/n4GKia
BWA HA HA HA Get’em, SG2! beat.that.ass.
beat.that.azz
BEAT. IT.!!!
Sen. Feinstein announces plan to repeal federal marriage statute
Source: CNN
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, announced Tuesday a bill to repeal the federal law that defines marriage as a “legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife” and that allows states to reject legal same sex marriages from other states.
The Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, passed both the House and the Senate in 1996.
Feinstein said she is one of only 14 senators who voted against the legislation at the time. “I thought even then, this is unconstitutional and wrong. Well, today it’s unconstitutional, I believe, and wrong,” she said in a news conference at the National Press Club in Washington.
She said her bill would “strike the Defense of Marriage Act from law and would free the government to allow for the same type of benefits they allow for married couples to also be applied to same-sex couples.”
Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2011/POLITICS/07/19/feinstein.doma/i…
The Raw Story:
The FBI says the Pakistani intelligence agency was funneling donations to GOP lawmakers: http://cot.ag/oV6k8b
Not a bit surprised. The GOP ties to Murdock will be revealed too,
And notice how tv folks like Barbara Walters, Piers Morgan, et.al. are defending Murdock.
Whatever is done in the dark will come to the light…
damn, this is cold and serious
For real.
Yes. Murdochs tentacles reach DEEP!!
Never forget how Hillary wooed him during the primaries, either.
Shirley Sherrod Case Against Andrew Breitbart Begins
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/19/shirley-sherrod-andrew-breitbart_n_902522.html#comments
WASHINGTON — A year to the day after Shirley Sherrod was ousted from the Agriculture Department, the former government employee is still seeking vindication.
On July 19, 2010, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack ordered Sherrod’s resignation from her job as a Georgia rural development official after learning about a video of Sherrod making supposedly racist remarks. On Tuesday, the U.S. District Court will hold the first hearing in Sherrod’s defamation case against the conservative blogger who posted the video.
The video on Andrew Breitbart’s website turned out to be edited, and when Sherrod’s full speech to an NAACP group earlier that year came to light, it became clear that her remarks about an initial reluctance to help a white farmer were not racist but an attempt at telling a story of racial reconciliation. Once that was obvious to everyone, Sherrod received public apologies from the administration – even from President Barack Obama himself – and an offer to come back to the USDA, which she declined.
Sherrod is now suing Breitbart, his employee Larry O’Connor and an unnamed “John Doe” defendant for “defamation, false light and intentional infliction of emotional distress.” Sherrod’s lawyers say the unnamed defendant is the person who they believe passed the video on to Breitbart.
The suit asks for damages but does not specify an amount. The complaint says the incident has affected Sherrod’s sleep and caused her back pain. It contends that she was damaged by having her “integrity, impartiality and motivations questioned, making it difficult (if not impossible) for her to continue her life’s work assisting poor farmers in rural areas” even though she was invited to come back to the Agriculture Department.
Lawyers for Breitbart and O’Connor have called the suit an assault on free speech and charge that Sherrod is seeking “revenge” on Breitbart because she does not like his politics. In one brief, they quote Sherrod saying on CNN shortly after she was ousted that Breitbart is “one person I’d like to get back at.”
Breitbart and O’Connor have asked that the case be dismissed under a new District of Columbia statute that aims to prevent the silencing of critics through lawsuits. They also have asked for it to be moved to California, where they both reside.
U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon is also expected to look at court jurisdiction. Sherrod originally filed the case in the District of Columbia Superior Court, but Breitbart’s lawyers asked to have it tried in federal court. Leon’s decision to hold a procedural hearing in the case Tuesday may be a sign that he intends to keep it there.
Get him, Shirley! Sue him to the knees! Take his lunch!
Breakfast, dinner and snacks too!!
I certainly wish Ms. Sherrod gains some restitution and peace from this debacle. Breibart should pay and pay dearly.
Good Afternoon, 3 Chickies!
Loving the Minneapolis sound of the Purple One.
I love Prince. Sexy mutha…
:)