Wednesday, June 27, 2007

I'm sure Cheryl Cox would plead guilty to a misdemeanor if she were investigated

Tanya Mannes of the San Diego Union Tribune wrote on June 20, 2007:

"Patrick O'Toole, a Public Integrity Unit prosecutor, spent months investigating Jason Moore, who had been an aide to former [Chula Vista] Mayor Steve Padilla... He concluded that Moore ultimately took the two hours off. But he believed Moore lied about the timing of when he turned in a request for personal leave... Yesterday, Moore, 36, pleaded guilty to one count of contempt of court, a misdemeanor."

“People can't come into the grand jury, swear to tell the truth, and then lie,” O'Toole said.

Well, yes. And they can't obstruct justice, suborn perjury, falsify court documents, or violate the Labor Code. But that is exactly what current Chula Vista mayor Cheryl Cox has done.

Which makes it all the stranger that Bonnie Dumanis has refused to investigate Richard Werlin and other Chula Vista Elementary School District figures who have sworn to tell the truth, and then lied--about more important issues than two hours off work.

Ironically, Moore was accused of taking two hours off work to spy on Cheryl Cox and David Malcolm at a Cox fundraiser. The irony is particularly heavy in this case because Cheryl Cox herself pressured a whole slew of public employees at Chula Vista Elementary School District to commit perjury. Much of the perjury was done to cover up falsification of documents, which Cheryl Cox, Patrick Judd, Larry Cunningham, Pamela Smith and Bertha Lopez made necessary when they voted to cover up crimes by dismissing a teacher. The dismissal was itself a violation of Labor Code section 1102.5

The Chula Vista Elementary School District board chose lawyers, Parham & Rajcic, and Stutz, Artiano Shinoff & Holtz, who could be depended upon to use illegal tactics to cover up the board's wrondoing. Obstruction of justice is all in a day's work for these law firms.

The fact that Cheryl Cox has more power now than when she was a CVESD board member makes it all the more important that she be answerable for her crimes.

Monday, June 25, 2007

Cheney isn't part of the executive branch

Vice President Dick Cheney claims he is not part of the executive branch, and therefore does not have to turn over documents to the agency in charge of executive branch documents.

Illinois Congressman Rahm Emanuel wants to take the Cheney at his word. Cheney says his office is "not an entity within the executive branch," so Emanuel wants to take away the tens of millions of dollars that are allocated to the White House to maintain it.

Tennessee tries to repair past injustices

The state of Tennessee paid for a DNA test that proved that Clark McMillan, who spent 22 years in prison for a rape he did not commit, was innocent.

Early in the process, McMillan told authorities who the real rapist was, but they weren't interested. Finally, McMillan was proved right. A DNA test proved David Boyd was the rapist.

Thursday, June 21, 2007

This school's lawyers were able to admit wrongdoing

(CNN) -- Duke University has reached an undisclosed settlement with three former lacrosse players who were falsely accused of rape, the school announced Monday.

"This past year has been hard for many people who care about Duke -- for students, faculty, staff, alumni, families and friends -- and for the three students and their families most of all," the Duke board of trustees said in a written statement.

The three students posted a statement on Duke's Web site saying, "We hope that today's resolution will begin to bring the Duke family back together again, and we look forward to working with the university to develop and implement initiatives that will prevent similar injustices and ensure that the lessons of last year are never forgotten."

David Evans, Collin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann were accused of sexually assaulting an escort-service dancer at a party in March 2006.

North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper reviewed the case and exonerated the three men in April 2007, saying the charges never should have been brought against them.

The prosecutor who brought those charges, Durham County District Attorney Mike Nifong, was disbarred Saturday by a disciplinary panel that said he violated the majority of at least 19 ethics offenses in prosecuting the case.

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Shoud San Diego Police Chief William Lansdowne Be Fired?

From Voice of San Diego
Wednesday, May 30, 2007

"For several years, members of the San Diego City Council have complained that they were misled if not outright lied to by the city's employees. Several of them have blamed staff members for getting them into so much trouble with agencies like the Securities and Exchange Commission. One of them, in fact, Councilman Brian Maienschein, regularly has avoided closed-session meetings of the council because, he says, he simply can't trust what he is told in them.

"Yet only Councilwoman Donna Frye has complained after revelations recently that Police Chief William Lansdowne has regularly made materially misleading statements about crime rates in the city of San Diego. Sometimes to the City Council itself, other times in public forums, the police chief has touted the city's crime environment with statistics and conclusions that were simply untrue. In a 2006 presentation to the City Council committee that oversees public safety efforts, Lansdowne claimed that the crime rate had gone down but that "it would be a struggle for us to do it again next year." The crime rate, in fact, had gone up.


"In the same forum the next year, the chief would claim that the city's crime rate was the lowest it had been since 1976. It wasn't.

"At that same presentation, he said that overall crime had been coming down each of the previous three years. It hadn't.

"Lansdowne said on public television that his officers were responding to the most serious of calls from residents in trouble "within the six minutes that we should." That was not true. Responses to emergency calls were taking an average of seven minutes and were getting slightly worse.

"The list goes on..."