Investigators have communicated with [Browne] since [2002] in letters and personal interviews. In that time, Browne has provided details on numerous other murders [48, to be exact] throughout the U.S., including nine in Colorado, the sheriff's office said.Browne has been in prison since 1995 for the killing of a 13-year-old Black Forest, Colorado, girl, and apparently spontaneously decided to confess all his murders. Of course, like Ottis Toole (note weird first-name spelling--shades of "Alferd" Packer), Browne might be confessing to anything and everything just for the attention.
So can Billy Bob. For the trip home he's promulgated the glorious "Three F's" campaign: Feed me, feed me, feed me.
Update: Little known fact: America's second highest civilian honor after the Medal of Freedom is the Rest Stop of Gratitude.
This is the four-gigabyte (well, 3.88) model. Besides all the music, I've put on scores of old radio shows, than which there is nothing better to listen to while driving.
This is hackneyed (it's the Drunkablog, after all), but it kills me that on this tiny ultramodern hunk of metal I can listen to (just as a few examples) a live 1927 broadcast of Charles Lindbergh's triumphal procession up the Potomac to Washington, D.C., after his return from Paris; Pete Seeger singing a surprisingly bloodthirsty little ditty called 'Round and 'Round Hitler's Grave during one of the first coast-to-coast radio hookups in February, 1942; and, at the far end of the same war, Lord Haw-Haw's drunken last broadcast from Berlin as it fell to the Russians ("Hei Hiller," he slurs).
Plus Jack Benny. And "Dragnet." And "Information Please." Living history, done live (well, not "Dragnet"), and for that perhaps more entertaining now than when first broadcast.
There'll be a post from somewhere tomorrow, probably. Maybe after I get across the line into Kansas and "the fuzz" can't hassle me no more.
(weirdly defensive Peoria Journal-Star article on Ward Churchill via PB)
"He's thinking if he's going to get caught (for hiring an illegal immigrant), he might as well get his bang for the buck, Tomsic said."She's a freakin' idiot, but she won the case.
Aerial photographs show the campers carved 40-50 miles of trails in the woods [must've had a meth lab out there--ed.] and a nearby meadow, Forest Service spokeswoman Denise Ottaviano said.Of course, the last two paragraphs take it all back:
Rainbows profess peace, love and respect for the earth, but any gathering that size will have consequences, Ottaviano said.
"There was just a shocking amount of trails through that area," she said. "Just simply by being there they had an impact on the land." Rainbows dug fire pits and latrines, and foot traffic between camps spread over four square miles trampled grass and left paths.
Several hundred Rainbows are expected to stay behind after today's official end to the gathering. Members say they will remain on the land into August, helping to clean up, reseed, remove footbridges and return the land to its natural state.
Forest Service specialists, including experts in soil and water plan to supervise the restoration.
recent events I witness in my neighborhood (Downtown Aurora), my 11 year struggle with chronic pain (including 7 spinal surgeries and more to come), updates on my hunt for/and disruption of Internet child predators in Colorado, and much more.If that doesn't get you interested, Timothy's bio-line reads, "Timothy J. Miller is a Mortgage Professional, Marketing Guru, and 45-day coma survivor."
Update: Speaking of anchored babies, "makeshift armored bulldozer" is no slouch of a phrase either.
Update II: Damn if LGF didn't post on the Colorado slavery case tonight (after I did, of course).
"Professor Churchill's grounds for this appeal include the fact that the committee's report and the recommendation of the interim chancellor were against the weight of the credible evidence presented and was in retaliation for his First Amendment protected free speech."A spokesperson for CU President Hank Brown told the Post that Churchill's appeal is "just a procedural aspect at this point since the report from privilege and tenure committee will be coming back to (Brown) for a decision . . . . It's not prudent to issue a comment at this point except to say that the process is in motion."
Each fairway runs 325 to 375 yards and has a par of 3 or 4. Here's the 13th "hole" (with scare quotes you need to taper):
The dirt is the "green" (tapering!)
We were going to play, but there were too many people waiting in between rainshowers.
We read in the tent while Billy made crop circles. He does this by yanking his frisbee around with his front paws:
Aerial view. He makes them in snow, too.
STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) -- A founding member of a hippie movement called the Rainbow Family suggested Saturday that it launch a federal lawsuit against a growing crackdown on their annual gatherings.
Barry Adams, known in the Rainbow Family as Barry Plunker, told a council circle at the first day of this year's weeklong gathering at Routt National Forest that federal pressure has gone too far.
Dozens of Forest Service officers, county deputies and Colorado State Patrol officers are manning checkpoints and patrolling camps as thousands of hippies flood the forest about 30 miles north of Steamboat Springs.Under federal rules, any gathering of more than 74 people in a national forest requires a permit. Officials have said that in a fire, the narrow dirt access road would become clogged and campers would be trapped.
The clash between Rainbows and federal officers at national parks has become such an annual tradition that the Forest Service in 1998 established a national response team to deal with the group. Members defying federal orders typically are issued citations for camping illegally. . . .
The Forest Service estimated that by Friday night about 6,000 tie-dyed hippies were camping in makeshift villages. That number swelled dramatically Saturday, the first official day of the gathering. . . .
Rainbows formed drum circles, exchanged beads, batik and crystals, and lined up at communal kitchens for meals. Everything is free, from meals to yoga classes to massage. Hugs are doled out at every turn and members greet each other by saying, "Welcome home."
Adams, 61, was drifting with a group of fellow hippies in the 1960s after his service during the Vietnam War when he decided to fulfill a vision of holding a giant gathering based on peace and love. Since the first Rainbow Family gathering in Colorado in 1972, he said, the federal government has denied permits and has done what it could to block the annual gathering. . . .
You see, Drunkablog's ancestors throve and grew full-'tarded on this land, this "Central" Illinois, with it's babbling brooks and majestic cottonwoods and frolicking deer all long ago drained and cut down and shot so as to concentrate everybody's mind on what's really important: corn.
So it's kind of like, I don't know, a homecoming. And if I don't chicken out from buying one I'll have a laptop and be able (maybe) to post along the road. It's been done to death, but when has that ever stopped &tc.
By the way, can one park outside a wi-fied motel and connect to the internet? That would be very helpful. What about truck stops? Do they generally have wi-fi these days?
Update: Don't forget to move Smiley -4 degrees!
Rainbow Family members on trial for camping without a permit and other charges should be tried in a larger public courtroom – not a small, rural firehouse near Steamboat Springs, attorney David Lane said today.One thing, though: If, as the Rainbows say, nobody's in charge, who hired Lane? Yes, that's a rhetorical question. He was probably camped out with the Rainbows from the start, and now is acting completely pro boner (hippie chicks have a rep, maaannnnnn).
He'd better make that nine days, hadn't he? Then Churchill goes after the Standing Committee on Research Misconduct in those Trotskyite tones we've all learned to love:From start to finish, the interim chancellor's blatant conflicts of interest – not to mention the political nature of his biases – have been obvious to anyone who cared to view the matter honestly. So, too, the ways in which he has manipulated the process at every step in order to guarantee the outcome he announced on Monday, June 26. . . .
The interim vice chancellor's strikingly duplicitous comportment over the past 16 months will not go unchallenged. I will file an appeal of the whole charade with the Faculty Senate's Committee on Privilege and Tenure (P&T) within the next 10 days.
In fact, each kind of academic misconduct the interim chancellor's carefully-selected panel claims I committed is engaged in by the panel itself in the writing of its report. (One of the panelists even takes credit for authoring a work unquestionably written by another scholar.)That's a new one. Isn't it? Anybody know who he might mean?
They still don't have a permit. Whatever, but more people are showing up every day, there's only one road in to the meadow where they're gathering, and the place is a tinderbox. As a friend of mine once said, "God bless the gentle hippies."Federal forest officials Tuesday clashed with members of the Rainbow Family north of Steamboat Springs, where the free-spirited tribe plans to hold its annual summer gathering of as many as 20,000 celebrants next month. . . .
The conflict was sparked by the U.S. Forest Service's decision to start issuing citations to early-bird Rainbow campers entering the Hahns Peak-Bears Ears Ranger District - roughly 30 miles north-northeast of Steamboat Springs - without a special-use permit.
Denise Ottaviano, an information officer for the National Incident Management Team [what do you want to be when you grow up, Denise dear?--ed.], said about 15 U.S. Forest Service law enforcement officers were forced to abandon a safety-and-information checkpoint after being encircled in a hostile manner by more than 200 Rainbows.
Ottaviano said the permit is required for a gathering of more than 74 people [seventy-four?--ed.] on Forest Service land.
About midday Tuesday, Ottaviano said, "a group of between 60 to 80 Rainbows started approaching the law enforcement officers from the interior of the gathering area in a very hostile manner.
"They broke up into groups and started surrounding the law enforcement officers at the checkpoint, and that incited the group of about 200 that was outside of the gathering area to then also approach and join in with the group that was already there, and start surrounding the law enforcement officers."
Ottaviano said that when the officers saw they were encircled, they drew their weapons ["they may get us, but we'll take a few hippies to hell with us!"] but did not fire [rats]. They were then able to get into their cars and leave.
News of trouble in a planned paradise 10 days before the start of the Rainbows' mass summer reveries didn't sit well with Rob Savoye. He's a 47-year-old Rainbow Family member who lives near Nederland and helped locate this year's gathering site. He wasn't present at Tuesday's confrontation.
The problem with securing the required permit for the use of the federal land, Savoye said, is "nobody is in charge (of the Rainbows), and so nobody can sign a permit.
"We always say, anybody who looks like they're in charge, obviously isn't."That reasoning won't wash with the feds.
Starting Monday you can visit cbs4denver.com for a chance to be chosen for the town hall talk with Couric on July 13 at the Denver Performing Arts Complex.I don't know. But here's one for you, Tim: How many consecutive times can you heave up green bile and live? (Update: Cal Thomas giggles girlishly at the prospect of Katie's tour.)
One hundred local folks will be selected for the meet and greet with the new CBS Evening News anchor, based on answers to an online questionnaire. Denver is one of six towns across the country that Couric will visit before debuting on the anchor desk in September.
"She wants to talk about issues and what people want to see in a network newscast," said CBS 4 news director Tim Wieland. "People sitting in the town hall will get to shape a network newscast. How often can you say that?"
Update II: KHOW has the audio of the news conference here."Today I issued to Professor Churchill a notice of intent to dismiss him from his faculty position here at the University of Colorado," said Phil DiStefano at a press conference.
Update 2 billion: Colorado Gov. Bill Owens, wishy-washy as ever on the subject:
"'If a university is a marketplace of ideas, then Mr. Churchill is the rotten fruit among hundreds of good apples,' Owens said in a statement. 'Hopefully, we can soon say good riddance to Ward Churchill once and for all.'"
Churchill has 10 days to appeal."A university is a marketplace of ideas, a place where controversy is no stranger . . . indeed one of our most cherished principals is academic freedom, the right to pursue and disseminate knowledge without threat of sanction," said DiStefano. "But with freedom comes responsibility."
Update IV: Churchill attorney David Lane on KHOW's Caplis and Silverman said all this faculty stuff is just "window dressing" and expressed the requisite lawyerly confidence that a Colorado jury will see through it.[...L]et me briefly explain the process as we go forward. Professor Churchill may request within 10 days to have President Brown or me forward this recommendation to the Faculty Senate Committee on Privilege and Tenure. If Professor Churchill does so, a special panel will then conduct hearings about this matter and make a recommendation to the president about whether the grounds for dismissal are supported.
Update (I've lost count): The Rocky consulted six "legal experts," all but one of whom said Churchill is a dead duck:If we appear somewhat stingy with compliments for the CU hierarchy, it's no accident. Todd Gleeson, dean of the College of Arts & Sciences, not only was showering Churchill with praise long after he might have worried that his ethnic studies professor was a scandal waiting to happen, but Gleeson also privately mocked a 2004 complaint from someone who heard Churchill give a speech at Macalester College in St. Paul and wondered if it was "the educational mission of your institution to employ someone who encourages students to terrorist action."
After the furor broke over Churchill's "Little Eichmanns" essay - an essay, by the way, that justifies a "dose of medicine" against the U.S. in the form of chemical or biological weapons - Interim Chancellor Phil DiStefano released a tepid statement distancing the university from the renegade professor but revealing little sign of genuine outrage. CU's president at the time, Elizabeth Hoffman, eventually would wax indignant, but against Churchill's critics, claiming they were the vanguard of a "new McCarthyism."
Attorneys who specialize in higher education law said CU can win a suit as long as the university followed due process in moving against Churchill.How. Ever.
And, they say, a powerful report by a CU investigative committee, detailing the evidence of misconduct, will be tough for Churchill to overcome.
"If they fire him, he'll stay fired," said Harvey Silverglate, a Massachusetts civil liberties attorney who specializes in representing faculty members in academic freedom cases.
Update 2 billion: Colorado Gov. Bill Owens, reticent as ever on the controversy, backs the "it's just Churchill" line:Michael Olivas of the University of Houston Law Center said Churchill has "a better-than-average chance" of showing that the investigation of his scholarship was launched in retaliation for his expression of unpopular opinions.
"They wouldn't be caring about Ward Churchill if it hadn't been for his 'little Eichmanns' remark, which may be inelegant, but he's entitled to it," said Olivas, the author of a widely used book on higher education law.
"'If a university is a marketplace of ideas, then Mr. Churchill is the rotten fruit among hundreds of good apples,' Owens said in a statement. 'Hopefully, we can soon say good riddance to Ward Churchill once and for all.'"
"I expected it to be pretty bleak, and it certainly was," said Richard Lapchick, founder and director of the University of Central Florida's DeVos Sports Business Management's Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport.They should get Larry Summers to explain it to them.
Lapchick's team of graduate students found in studying the 5,100-employee makeup of 303 sports departments that 94.7% of sports editors, 89.9% of columnists and 87.4% of reporters are white. The study also showed that 95% of the editors, 93% of the columnists and 90% of the reporters are male. Similar percentages were found in the positions of assistant sports editors and copy editors.
How did the committee's belief that they could avoid "privileging" one truth over another work out in practice? Here they are accepting (sort of) "an apparently Mandan perspective" on the smallpox epidemic found in a speechThe Committee recognizes the validity of many ways of knowing about the past. . . . Multiple perspectives, providing different vantage points about a given set of events, enhance our ability to understand the complexity of the past. Thus the oral traditon of a tribe involved in a previous event may force reconsideration of established acounts derived exclusively from written documentation. . . .The oral traditions of the Mandan, Arikara, Hidatsa, and Sioux peoples, those closest to the events at Fort Clark, likewise contain multiple and conflicting assessments. We believe that all kinds of sources have value; we privilege none.
Yep. Fake but accurate.said to have been given by Chief Four Bears as he was dying of smallpox in 1837. The text of the speech was preserved together with [a racist jerk going under the name of] Chardon's journal and was later inserted into the appropriate chronological place by the editor of the published volume. Although the authenticity of the speech has been questioned, it seems possible that Four Bears did give such a speech (though perhaps not on the day of his death) and that Chardon was told about it by someone who spoke both Mandan and either French or English. While Four Bears' speech was certainly mediated--translated and transcribed by someone other than its nominal author--it may provide a generally accurate representation of his sentiments. A descendant of Four Bears recited his statement in full in a conversation around 2000 and accepted it as reliable.
The tradition should be supported by an unbroken series of witnesses, reaching from the immediate and first reporter of the fact to the living mediate witness from whom we take it up, or to the one who was the first to commit it to writing.Other requirements:
There should be several parallel and independent series of witnesses testifying to the fact in question.
The tradition must report a public event of importance, such as would necessarily be known directly to a great number of persons.Clearly the committee's rationale for accepting the Mandan oral tradition falls short of several of these requirements: there's no unbroken chain of witnesses; the smallpox epidemic is well over 150 years old (and who can say whether the Mandan "excel in oral remembrance," anyway?); and the tradition has been contested by a number of "critical-minded" people. Still, that tradition must be given at least equal weight with all the other "truths" the committee says are knocking around Fort Clark.
The tradition must have been generally believed, at least for a definite period of time.
During that definite period it must have gone without protest, even from persons interested in denying it.
The tradition must be one of relatively limited duration. (Elsewhere, Garraghan suggests a maximum limit of 150 years, at least in cultures that excel in oral remembrance.)
The critical spirit must have been sufficiently developed while the tradition lasted, and the necessary means of critical investigation must have been at hand.
Critical-minded persons who would surely have challenged the tradition — had they considered it false — must have made no such challenge.
I am well aware that there is often a postmodernist spin put on oral history and ethnic legends. This claims that traditional notions of history have been undermined by recent epistemological critiques, and that all cultures are authentic in their own terms, and that all legends are therefore true for their believers. The advocates of this view often apply it to such worthy cultures as those of ethnic and indigenous minorities, as well as other fashionable political interest groups. They rarely recognise that the same argument confers authenticity on the claims of cultures of which they might not approve, such as those of neo-Nazis, white supremacists, Islamic jihadists and other species of political depravity. This rejection of traditional empirical history leads to cultural relativism in which the legends, myths and prejudices of any culture become legitimate. It is a philosophy of anything goes. . . .
Hilariously, Windschuttle proceeds to jump all over the devoutly multi-culti museum crowd, pointing out that the central exhibit in the Aboriginal section of the museum,
a photographic display of the so-called Bells Falls Gorge Massacre near Bathurst in the 1820s, gave credibility to a mythological event for which there was no contemporary evidence. Although it is now claimed as part of ancient Aboriginal tradition, Aboriginal activists only learnt of it from an article about local legends written by a white amateur historian in 1962.With some exasperation, then, Windschuttle asks:
How many times do we need to learn the same lesson? Old legends and oral history, unless they are corroborated by original documents, are worthless as historical evidence whether told by blacks or whites. Historians who go down this road leave the search for truth behind.Is it any wonder Australia's "black-armband" historians start twitching when they see Windschuttle shlubbing over the horizon? Their fear is so naked that at the annual confab of the Australian Historical Association in 2004, a motion specifically aimed at Windschuttle called for (as The Australian put it) "a code of ethics that would gag historians from criticising the integrity of their peers in public." Highly instructive. This country is long overdue for its own Windschuttle.
