and where i am coming from has yet to be determined, i know not how to communicate something so incredibly difficult. i know only the things that have been given to me, wrapped in a box without ribbon, but paper, decorated with the scribblings of a child. they were digging for something new in columbia, and i wonder who might become the next president. at this point i want the beautiful people to win, man or woman. keep huckabee away from this country. it has been concluded that romney cannot make up his mind and edwards does not know what he is talking about ever. i can choose between the colors, like anidifranco, on the whores. ash Wednesday is ten days away. and there is a laughter here, in that place where God says, "Remember you are dust and unto dust you shall return." and four years ago we watched a shipwreck and a bleeding nose run together for miles on end and this year we will sit under the golden arches of McDonald's fast food restaurant and run together for miles and miles on end. Ash Wednesday marks this day as it marks the day for children to cry together and begin starving until ash wednesday falls, slides against this day again.
Yet when I look at pictures, photographs of moments when there is no doubt that all of us were together in the opportunity to photograph, I see not myself. I see someone else.
This picture was taken almost one year ago today, funny how things change:
love, jessieh
PS: A beautiful couple will be together today in Italy and that makes me happy.
About Huckabee: One of my questions was: What specific evidence did Huckabee have that made him believe a convicted rapist was likely innocent? Here's a partial answer from CBS News which will echo familiar themes used by rape denialists. And then there's the story of Wayne DuMond. In 1985, DuMond was convicted of the rape of a 17-year-old girl with a connection to then-Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton: She was the governor's distant cousin and the daughter of a major campaign contributor. As Clinton rose to national prominence, the case came to the attention of his critics. Journalists and talk show hosts questioned the victim's story and suggested that DuMond had been railroaded by the former governor.
This baseless dismissal of a rape victim's testimony and baseless suggestion of prosecutor misconduct is pathetically common. The difference between allegations about Bill Clinton's actions related to this case and allegations about Mike Huckabee's actions is simple. Evidence. Steve Dunleavy, a New York Post columnist, took up the case as a cause, calling DuMond’s conviction "a travesty of justice." The story also came with a tabloid-ready twist: DuMond said that while awaiting trial, masked men broke into his house and castrated him. Though there were doubts about the story, it engendered sympathy for DuMond among Clinton foes. DuMond's sentence had been set at life in prison, plus 20 years. In 1992, Clinton's successor in the Arkansas governor's mansion, Jim Guy Tucker, reduced that sentence to 39 years, making DuMond eligible for parole. When Huckabee became governor in 1996, he expressed doubts about DuMond's guilt and said he was considering commuting his sentence to time served. After the victim and her supporters protested, Huckabee decided against commutation. Here's where we get the most critical actions by Huckabee. Maybe before this point, he could claim ignorance about the true seriousness of DuMond's risk to public safety. But not after the protests.
Not only was DuMond a suspect in multiple rapes and at least one attempted rape and convicted twice for attacks on teen girls (the other time in Washington state), he was actively involved in a man's 1972 bludgeoning death. In that case, DuMond was given immunity in return for testifying against the 2 other men involved. He testified to striking the victim in the head with a claw hammer but said he didn't strike the killing blow. The men being tried claimed that he did strike the killing blow.
The question with these details is why anyone would NOT anticipate that this man would resume being violent upon release from prison or be such a serious risk that the only compassionate action would be to oppose parole?
Evidence met Huckabee's initial position about DuMond. Evidence lost.
If Huckabee had dropped his efforts to free DuMond at this point because of the evidence or had publicly maintained his support that an innocent man was in prison, I might be able to have some respect for him, but Huckabee made the choice to change tactics.
But in 1997, according to the Kansas City Star, Huckabee wrote a letter to DuMond saying "my desire is that you be released from prison." Less than a year later, DuMond was granted parole. Huckabee's office denied that the governor played a role in the parole board's decision, but there was evidence (exhaustively detailed here) to contradict that claim. [... DuMond] left prison in 1999 and ended up in Missouri. Not long after he arrived, he was arrested again - this time for sexually assaulting and murdering a woman named Carol Sue Shields. DuMond was also the leading suspect in the rape and murder of another woman.
Any possibility that Huckabee was somehow suckered into freeing a dangerous man because he didn't have access to relevant information is eliminated by the Arkansas state records the Huffington Post's Murray Waas uncovered in 2002 (before DuMond died in 2005), including letters from victims and families of victims that predicted DuMond's future criminal behavior. The anticipated actions included the escalation from rape to rape/murder. Something that has been stated as being unpredictable. Because of concerns for the privacy of these victims, Waass didn't include or reference these documents in his previous story about Huckabee's involvement in DuMond's parole.
Before Dumond was granted parole at Huckabee's urging, records show that Huckabee's office received a copy of this letter [written by another of DuMond's victims] from Arkansas' parole board.
The woman later wrote directly to Huckabee about having been raped by Dumond. In a letter obtained by the Huffington Post, she said that Dumond had raped her while holding a butcher knife to her throat, and while her then-3-year-old daughter lay in bed next to her. Also included in the files sent to Huckabee's office was a police report in which Dumond confessed to the rape. Dumond was not charged in that particular case because he later refused to sign the confession and because the woman was afraid to press charges.
So Huckabee either didn't bother to read a police report where DuMond confessed to rape or he did read it and the contents of that report didn't matter to him. Since a parole hearing doesn't determine guilt or innocence, details of unprosecuted crimes are directly relevant to establishing a convict's public safety risk.
Often when someone is a serial criminal and one of his crimes will result in life in prison, other crimes won't be prosecuted so this lack of police action in no way exonerated DuMond. Many of those who would excuse Huckabee won't excuse a rape victim who was too scared to press charges because of direct death threats. The reality is that a rape victim scared of being assaulted or murdered has a valid reason, Huckabee has no valid reasons, only excuses. Huckabee's actions were not acts of Christian charity, but acts which denied charity to crime victims who were dismissed as unimportant just as the lives of future victims were dismissed as unimportant.
Behavior like this is why I oppose those who pick candidates by how they fill out so-called moral issue surveys. Too often it seems like those check boxes are used as a shield against real scrutiny about how a candidate has and will govern or how they have and will legislate. Steve Dunleavy and others like him who worked on the campaign to free DuMond and to paint a rape victim as a liar must be viewed as partially responsible for at least one woman's death. To them this might have simply been part of a political game, but their games hurt real people. Update: CNN has quoted Huckabee's "heartbroken" response to the new information and the criticism directed at him because of that information.
"There are families who are truly, understandably and reasonably, grief stricken," Huckabee told CNN. "And for people to now politicize these deaths and to try to make a political case out of it rather than to simply understand that a system failed and that we ought to extend our grief and heartfelt sorrow to these families, I just regret politics is reduced to that."
How about regretting that politics led you to release a serial rapist who had been involved in at least one murder prior to his imprisonment? The system didn't fail. You failed, with the system as your tool and your fall guy. Rather than being heartbroken over the backlash you are getting, how about being heartbroken that your actions allowed 1 and possibly 2 preventable deaths. If you want forgiveness for your actions then as a ‘good Christian’ you first need to repent. Huckabee's defense of his part in DuMond's release remind me of rapists admitting to mistakes.. In both cases the passive admission is designed to help the person escape accountability.
The trouble with compassion (and it’s shielding qualities):
When Gov. Mike Huckabee explains why he worked to help convicted rapist Wayne DuMond get paroled before DeMond -- as predicted to Huckabee -- went on to rape and murder, he says he acted out of compassion.
Now there is another case where compassion for a violent offender, is given as the cause of actions which resulted in the preventable death of a woman. This time it was Monica Thomas-Harris who paid the price for so-called compassion with her life.
Deputy District Attorney Samer Hathout, who was filling in on the case, and her supervisor both signed off on the deal to let [Curtis Harris] out. Superior Court Judge Tia Fisher, who was filling in for a vacationing judge, agreed.
"The man appeared rational when I spoke to him, so I presented it to the district attorney and they agreed," said Harris' lawyer, Arthur Lindars. "It's everybody's worst nightmare."
When a man has a history of violence against his estranged wife and that wife reported him to the police so that he was heading to prison for false imprisonment and possession of a gun by a felon, an escalation of the violence by this man isn't a nightmare, it is a predictable possibility. Revenge.
But he "appeared rational" when he came up with an excuse about why he should be freed before his sentencing is a lame excuse for ignoring the evidence. If the substitutes don't know that their absent counterparts -- and the victim -- supported his release, he shouldn't have been considered for release no matter what his lawyer believed or wanted.
Period.
The defense attorney -- the only non-substitute -- wasn't working for the safety or interests of the victim or the public. The rest of the system needs to act with the knowledge that defense attorneys operate with tunnel vision and distrust for evidence against their clients. Like in the DuMond case there was supporting evidence that this man was not safe enough to release. In this man's file was a probation report which stated that Harris was a danger to his wife and unsuitable for release.
But so-called compassion trumped evidence and investigations.
A violent man only needed to talk about needing to see to his elderly mother for the victim and public safety to be forgotten. Those who think they can see into people's hearts are often the easiest to fool since they don't feel the need to do even the most basic research to ensure they aren't being played.
Judges and prosecutors will always be busy so we need to have processes in place so that the violent cannot use this regular occurrence to get what they should be denied because they can plead their case in such a way as to elicit a compassionate emotional response without the presence of any countering stories or evidence.
There is nothing wrong with genuine emotion or compassion and those who demand a complete lack of emotion have it as wrong as those they oppose. Too often this so-called rational response ignores the impact and severity of violent crimes when victims suffer no permanent bodily injuries. This type of person could look at this case and say the estranged wife was only scared not harmed and therefore conclude that this man was not a truly violent offender and shouldn't be treated by the system as such. The estranged wife's fear would then be labeled as irrational and incorrectly dismissed as irrelevant.
True compassion and good rational decisions come from knowing everything about a case or an offender and discounting none of the facts and none of the emotions. People can have compassion for a violent offender who cannot go out and see his elderly mother without making the decision to give that violent offender what he wants.
What gets called a compassionate action is too often in reality just being successfully manipulated or it is a handy lie used by the sloppy or the uncaring when a predictable bad outcome becomes reality.
The winner of the contest will receive a shiny plastic Powell's Books gift card with a picture of a little astronaut on it (please see above) with a value of $60. This is how you enter the contest:
1. Write a post on your blog that focuses directly on the issues surrounding domestic and sexual violence (i.e. the lack of awareness, the misunderstanding of these crimes, the fact that most of these crimes go unreported, the shame that society places on survivors).
2. Please include in your post a link to the International Domestic Violence Information site (www.hotpeachpages.net/index.html), a link to the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network (www.rainn.org) and the telephone number for the National Sexual Assault Hotline (for people in the United States): 1-800-656-HOPE or 1-800-656-4673.
3. Leave a comment here (click for Artconstellation's blog) letting me know where I can find your post or send me an email at artconstellation@gmail.com.
Contest deadline: February 14, 2008, the winner will be announced the following day. Please spread the word about this contest and thank you for entering. (NOTE: If you do not have a blog but would still like to enter the contest please email me your submission and it will be included.)
"It's as if the Universe is bi-polar and isn't taking her meds, and we all know what that means. Mr. Universe has to dodge flying produce and sleep on an air mattress in the spare bedroom."-Heather B. Armstrong, Dooce.com
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Last October (that sounds weird), I posted a blog with the title: "The news I caught tonight" Well, I purchased Richard Baer's Switching Time: A Doctor's Harrowing Story of Treating a Woman with 17 Personalities finally.
The odd thing, I just learned that Richard Baer was the name of the Nazi official that ran Aushcwitz concentration camp from May, 1994 to February, 1945. He was found and arrested in 1960. He died, in detention, in 1963.
I wonder if Dr.Richard Baer's parents knew this man existed. If so. I'm sorry Doc. --- And in other news: -Children everywhere are being hurt. -Jesus loves you. -Patrick is coming tomorrow to visit. -Breakfast this morning at the Waffle House was fun. - On this day in 1890, Alice Sanger became the first female staffer in the White House. -We finished Ms.Hepburn's Christmas gift (attempt number three now) today. It looks nice. I hope she likes it. -Finally caught an episode of "The Golden Girls" -Therapy tomorrow and Friday -The stomach hurts. -I'd like a diet coke and a stiff drink, but that is a-whole-other story. No drinks for me. -I should start reading the next book for English, but I haven't. -I want to complete The Year of Magical Thinking and Dr.Baer's book first. -Mary had a really really good day yesterday with the twins and Mere. She left a note. -The fireworks last night were scary and good. -New Year's Day is an aware day. It forces people around the globe to pay attention to something, whatever that some-thing may be. For some, it is horrific. For us, it was good this year and I couldn't be more grateful. -Depression is still here. -Insomnia is exhausting. -Finding Angela Shelton is released in less than three months.
than by watching a marathon of MSNBC's "To Catch a Predator".
Chris Hansen, spending the first six hours of 2008 with you, my television, a stuffed hedge-hog named Hillary and crying pedophiles is all I could ever hope for.
The amount of happiness I gain from this is a bit dangerous.
