DOJ civil rights head resigns

i haven't been blogging about national politics so much lately, because there are so many great national-themed blogs that i rarely feel like i have anything to add to the discussion. but this ties nicely into the conversation we've been having here at the way over the past couple days.

john tanner, head of the DOJ's civil rights division, resigned today, effective immediately. tpm muckraker has been covering tanner's career at the division for awhile, so i'll just quote from them, leaving in their links:

With Tanner, it had seemed like a matter of not if, but when. As we reported late last month, his travel habits had angered attorneys in the voting section, leading to an investigation by the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility.

And that was after his comments about the tendency of minorities to "die first" led Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL), Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), and others to call for his resignation. When he went before the House Judiciary Committee in October, he was lambasted for his tendency of "basing your conclusions on stereotypes" (like, say, claiming that African-Americans have IDs more than whites because they're always going to cash-checking businesses).

But most of all, Tanner's reign is notable for his collusion with the political appointees who oversaw the section, an ongoing effort to reverse the Civil Rights Division's traditional role in protecting minority voters, particularly African-Americans, into one of aiding thinly disguised vote suppression measures (most infamously Georgia's voter ID law). It was an effort that some career DoJ attorneys later described as "institutional sabotage."¶

lake county voter fraud: the whole story

right-wingers are crowing about this news story out of lake county. it turns out that indiana attorney general steve carter has been winning a lot of voter fraud cases. out of 53 cases filed, he already has 38 convictions.

hoosier access declares that "it would appear that the state Democrats have no leg to stand on when it comes to crying about Indiana's Voter I.D. law and the 'lack of proof'". buzzcut proclaims that "Those of you downstate, take some time to learn the details of this case. This is exactly why we need the ID to vote law. It puts a stop to this kind of nonsense."

fair enough. let's learn the details of this case, shall we? oh, what's this here at the end of the story?

"You're talking about average people, men and women, and they were manipulated. And it was fear of losing their jobs or fear of their family members losing their jobs," Bernard Carter said. "These people didn't just wake up and say, 'I'm going to vote absentee in East Chicago.'"

vote absentee, you say? indiana's voter ID law doesn't apply to absentee ballots. so not only is this not evidence that the voter ID law prevents fraud—which it doesn't—but it actually demonstrates that prosecutors don't need the voter ID law to prosecute voter fraud, because steve carter is doing a pretty good job without it.

as i've said before, the main problem with indiana's voter ID law is that it's a fix for a nonexistent problem: fraud at the polling place. the vast majority of voter fraud that takes place these days is absentee voting fraud. absentee fraud is easy: get a bunch of ballots, fill them out, forge or otherwise acquire the proper signatures, and mail 'em in.

fraud at the polling place is much more difficult, despite what some of my commenters might think, which is why people don't really do it anymore. the days when you could vote, shave your beard into a moustache, vote again, then shave off the moustache and vote a third time are long gone. on those rare occasions when actual fraud at the polling place is found, it is typically done by mistake by people who don't know better.

every so often, the right will grab onto another story of voter fraud prosecutions and jump up and down hooting and hollering about how it proves them right; how democrats are stupid, naive, corrupt, or worse. yet, without fail, it always turns out that these stories involve absentee voter fraud, which is not covered by their beloved voter ID law.

so if indiana's voter ID law doesn't address the true source of voter fraud—absentee ballots—then what is the point?

update: while i was writing this post, thomas at blue indiana was writing something very similar. great minds, or something.¶

uncounted ballots

in his "news of interest" widget, doug links to this tpm muckraker piece about how the DoJ has filed an amicus brief with the US supreme court supporting indiana's draconian voter ID law. the supremes will hear arguments in january for the case.

the tpm muckraker post links to this post on the election law blog. but what really caught my eye was this post, also at election law blog, which links to this brief filed by the marion county election board.

in the brief, the election board claims that at least 32 voters were disenfranchised by the voter ID law in marion county last month:

Provisional ballots were not counted in the 2007 municipal election because of the Voter Identification Statute

In the 2007 municipal election, some votes of otherwise-eligible individuals were not counted because they did not comply with the Voter Identification Statute. The Election Board can verify that at least thirty-four persons arrived at the polls and presented themselves for voting without appropriate photo identification (others may have done so without making a record through the provisional balloting process). As required by statute, each of the thirty-four filled out and signed provisional ballot paperwork, then cast a provisional ballot that was not counted, but rather was sealed and sent to the Election Board for further review. Of the thirty-four provisional ballots cast, only two voters followed up by bringing their compliant identification to the County Clerk's Office so that their provisional ballots would be counted. The other thirty-two did not bring compliant identification to the Clerk's Office within the time period designated by statute, and their votes therefore were not counted. See Ind. Code § 3-11.7-5-2.5.

All thirty-four individuals appeared at the polling place for the precinct in which they were registered. All signatures appearing on their provisional ballot envelopes matched the poll book signatures.4 Two of those whose votes were not counted had voted in fifteen previous elections at their precincts. Six others had voted in fourteen elections at their precincts. Four others had voted in thirteen prior elections at their precincts. One had voted in twelve elections at her precinct, and another had voted in ten elections at her precinct. Only six had no history of voting in a Marion County election, and the remaining persons had voted a handful of times at the precinct where they were registered and appeared on November 6, 2007.

these 32 people showed up at the polls intending to vote, yet their votes were not counted because they could not meet the strict requirements of the voter ID law. of the 32, 26 were regular, long-term voters who had been voting in that location for years, but this year their votes were taken away from them. and that's just in marion county, in one election that had low turnout in many areas. how many more were disenfranchised statewide? and how many more will be disenfranchised if the law isn't overturned? ¶

indyu: the missing post

i believe i've uncovered the missing indyu post and am reposting it below. of course, the entire indyundercover blog has been deleted, so in a sense all the posts are missing, but i'm talking about the post, the one that named a condfidential police informant, leading the police to seek out a search warrant against abdul hakim-shabazz (as originally reported by russ mcquaid).

in my previous post, i hinted that this was still in the google cache if you knew where to look, but that i wasn't going to link directly to it—in effect encouraging savvy readers to find it on their own. but on reflection, it occurred to me that the more responsible thing to do might be to repost it here, in a redacted form. so here it is. i've left in the name of the primary suspect, which was discussed in the media at the time, but have redacted the names of the informants as well as the name of the second suspect:

the original post contained an image, which wasn't archived by google so i don't have it.

this story is getting more interesting all the time, with ike randolph denying his role in indyu to ruth holladay, but telling her a totally different story than he told gary welsh. i can't imagine what relevations tomorrow might bring.¶

indyundercover six feet under

the indyundercover blog is closing up shop. this is hardly a surprise, because as i said last month, the site's sole function seemed to be hatin' on bart peterson, so now that bart is on his way out, indyu has no purpose. indeed, when the blog actually admitted earlier this week that murders are down this year—and tried to credit mayor-elect ballard, who hasn't taken office yet—that was a sure sign that indyu was not long for this world.

but surely that can't be the whole story. so in "honor" of the blog that has spread more rumors than any other website in indiana—many of them false—let's look at some of the rumors surrounding indyu's demise.

one rumor going around is that indyu is shutting down because the person/people behind it are getting new cushy jobs in the ballard administration. this rumor resonates because two of the top suspects are on ballard's transition team—disgruntled cop robert turner and firefighter/outgoing councillor isaac "ike" randolph. randolph's name in particular has been tossed around as possibly behind indyu for more than a year, and last year someone forwarded gary welsh emails that were allegedly between randolph and local journalist abdul hakim-shabazz discussing what to post on the blog.

which brings us to abdul. abdul has been the top suspect for weeks, ever since an incident last month when abdul got word that a search warrant was about to be served against him. abdul quickly lawyered up and posted about it on his official blog, suggesting that the police were after him because he was investigating a story involving "alleged child sexual abuse by a very prominent and wealthy local Democrat". (more than three weeks later, abdul hasn't uttered another word about the democrat molester story, leading me to be skeptical about whether any such story ever existed.)

in that blog post, abdul confessed that he knew the "guys" behind indyu, including one particularly interesting tidbit: "I'll even admit it was my idea over lunch one day." things got even more suspicious when indyu, which had previously announced that it might shut down, posted in support of abdul, declaring that the blog was going to stick around because "someone has to keep our leadership honest!"

ruth holladay, who had long suspected that abdul was behind indyu, was reinvigorated by all this and became obsessed with unmasking joe friday, the blog's pseudonymous author. so after yesterday's announcement that the blog was being shut down, ruth called abdul for more information and got some intriguing answers:

In a phone conversation this morning, Abdul acknowledged he would occasionally "pass something along" to the blog, and vice versa, he says. "We had a mutual exchange of information."

But, he insisted, he was not IndyUndercover. "Here's the thing. That blog is not a person. Joe Friday is like Uncle Sam."

Abdul acknowledged, again, that he has a lot of cop friends and said what he's said before on his Indiana Barrister blog: that he advised a bunch of disgruntled officers over drinks a year and a half ago how they could start their own blog. "I thought the cops in this town were being treated crappy. My attitude was, 'Hey, if I can help, I will.'"

like i said in the comments, that nonsense about how "joe friday is like uncle sam" sounds like a classic non-denial denial to me. we heard almost identical crap from ernie shearer when he was outed as the indy chicken. what it means is that abdul is one of the people behind indyu, but he doesn't do it by himself. that allows him to make weasely statements that are misleading but technically accurate: thus "i am not joe friday" is technically true because joe friday is in fact abdul plus one or two other dudes.

then last night, fox 59's russ mcquaid unearthed more facts. (blue indiana has the youtube.) remember that search warrant that was supposedly issued against abdul? it turns out that it was issued because of an arson investigation which was damaged when the name of a confidential police informant was published on indyu. oops. but someone tipped off abdul about the warrant, effectively killing it: the subject of a warrant mustn't know that a warrant is coming because that gives them time to destroy evidence, et cetera. (notifying someone of a pending warrant is typically obstruction of justice, though mcquaid found someone who claimed that it wasn't in this case because the warrant was illegal.)

based on all this, i'm somewhat convinced that those emails that were forwarded to gary were real, and that indyundercover is abdul and ike randolph. i'm almost totally convinced about abdul; i'm just not positive that randolph was his partner. however, i don't expect either of them to confess anytime soon. already a dark cloud is surrounding abdul's reputation—i know i for one will be skeptical of everything he says until his role in indyu is made clear—and if he is one of the people behind indyu then that raises serious questions about his journalistic ethics. similarly, randolph has nothing to gain and everything to lose: rumor has it, he's being considered for a deputy mayor position in the ballard administration, which he surely won't get if he's outed as joe friday.

so i'm afraid the true identity of joe friday will remain a mystery, at least for the time being, and my suspicions will remain unproven. still, whether abdul was at the core of indyundercover as ruth & i suspect or whether he just played a minor ancillary role as he claims, he's now under a lot of scrutiny for committing a major journalistic faux pas: rather than reporting the story, he has become the story.

update: the entire indyundercover blog now appears to have been deleted. what are they hiding? of course, the site is still in the google cache, for the time being. in fact, the post that named the confidential police informant is still in the google cache if you know where to look, though i'm not going to link to it.

2nd update: ruth talks to ike randolph about those emails that were forwarded to gary welsh. randolph categorically denies being involved with indyu. but ruth is more convinced than ever that it was abdul's blog.

3rd update: from gary welsh:

When I read Randolph's exchange with Holladay, I was a bit taken back by it. As I stated earlier, Randolph told me he was in Mexico on vacation with his family at the time the e-mail in question had been sent and did not have access to his e-mail account. Now, he says he says he was at the firehouse when Shabazz contacted him about sending the e-mail and the word "indyundercover" was intentionally included in the e-mail's subject heading. Call me cynical, but someone isn't getting his story straight on this one.

uh-oh. i was already skeptical about ike's "bait" story, and now i'm pretty sure it was a lie. i must admit it was a sneaky way of trying to flip the allegations against him onto his political enemies, and it might have even worked if he hadn't told gary something else entirely.

incidentally, in his post, gary repeats the claim that "twice" he has been accused of being joe friday. this is not true; it only happened once, when jacob "the scribe" perry did it. despite what gary believes, steph mineart never said any such thing; he simply misinterpreted her post. this was repeatedly pointed out to him, but he has never acknowledged his mistake. i know this is a minor, irrelevant detail, so i didn't bother to point it out when the falsehood appeared in ruth's post, but i do want to set the record straight now that gary is still trying to push his mistaken version of events. ¶

lolcolts

this week is another two-fer. ¶

but it's so expensive!

in today's star, we see that some indiana legislators are reluctant for the state to take on child welfare costs:

Lawmakers warned advocates for children Thursday that the state will have to find a way to control child welfare costs if those expenses are shifted from property taxpayers to the state.

"We can't take over the cost of this and then allow the judges to tell us how much money we're going to spend," state Sen. Luke Kenley, R-Noblesville, said during debate on the issue Thursday in the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Gov. Mitch Daniels and a bipartisan legislative commission have advocated moving child welfare -- about $490 million annually -- to the state to provide property tax relief.

The costs of providing assistance to abused, neglected or delinquent children have been rising an average of about 6.8 percent statewide annually for the past 12 years, well ahead of inflation. The costs vary widely by county.

Capping those costs is virtually impossible because of federal mandates to help children, advocates told lawmakers at Thursday's hearing, one of several being held this month to kick-start property tax reforms before the General Assembly goes into session Jan. 8.

Cathleen Graham, executive director of the Indiana Association of Residential Child Care Agencies, reminded legislators that child welfare is an entitlement program, meaning the law demands that services be provided.

so the legislators don't want to pay for child welfare because it's expensive, and there's no way to control costs because of federal and state mandates. i might be sympathetic to their complaint, except that the counties have been in that situation for years. the law requires that these costs be paid, and until now the state has forced counties to pay them, despite having no power to control the costs. that's a sucky situation for anyone to be in, but it's a bit less sucky for the state than for the counties.

it doesn't help that the front page of the paper has another story about tajanay bailey, a three-year-old girl who was failed by the system, allegedly abused to death by her parents. the juxtaposition just makes the legislators look like heartless bastards. this quote from senator meeks says it all: "I'm reluctant to do this. I want to take care of kids. But entitlement guarantees we have to take care of them regardless of what the cost is."

he wants to take care of kids, but not if it's going to cost a lot! unfortunately, child welfare isn't something you can half-ass. if you do, kids end up dead. so quit your bitching and figure out how to get it done!

update: i see that doug has more, only instead of linking to the star, he links to this AP article.¶

early to rise but not so wise

in a letter to the editor in today's star, former gop chair rex early continues to spread the myth that recent property tax increases were caused by excessive local spending:

Local spending in Indiana has increased from $2.1 billion in 1984 to $7.9 billion last year. These massive increases are neither fair, nor sustainable to the property taxpayers of Indiana.

That's why I support Gov. Mitch Daniels' proposal to cut property taxes for every Hoosier homeowner, capping them forever at a maximum of 1 percent of a home's value.

Make no mistake: This plan is a big change. It will provide real and permanent property tax relief that homeowners need and deserve.

First, it's appropriate that the state assume the costs of child welfare and the remaining school funding. We can pay for this with a one-cent increase in the state sales tax, gaming revenue already earmarked for property tax relief, and a portion of the state's surplus, which Daniels achieved by controlling state spending the last three years.

if only any of it were true.

the reason the state has a surplus is because the governor "controlled spending" by simply deciding to stop paying for stuff, and mandating that local governments should pay for it instead. so state spending went down, local spending went up (because the state mandated it), and then the governor's office began mocking local governments because their spending went up. that's like me pushing you down into the snow and then laughing at your lack of balance.

in fact, this is quite similar to how we got into the recent property tax mess in the first place. as doug has tried to explain time and time again:

[T]he spike can be mostly explained by:

1. Caps on the Property Tax Replacement Credit and Homestead Credit — These were State actions that were done to allow the State to balance its own budget; in effect, the State balanced its budget on the backs of local government.

2. Elimination of the inventory tax — An action by the State that shifted the tax burden from inventory tax payers to property tax payers.

3. Trending — Part of the State's implementation of a State court's 1998 decision that the State's method of taxation was unconstitutional.

The fact is that the General Assembly and the Governor (primarily through the Department of Local Government Finance) are heavily involved in micromanaging the taxing authority of local government and, consequently, bear most of the blame in the recent property tax increases.

so it's a double whammy. the state forces local governments to take on extra costs but doesn't give them the money to do so, forcing local governments to increase spending and (perhaps) raise taxes, then criticizes local governments for doing what it forced them to.

not to mention that it's unfair to compare numbers from 1984 with numbers from today. in '84, comic books cost $0.60 and vinyl records were $8.99. now comics are $3 a pop and new cds run $18 or more.

rex early is right about one thing, though. it is "appropriate that the state assume the costs of child welfare and the remaining school funding." indeed, increases in state-mandated child welfare costs were one of the causes of the recent tax spike in marion county. if the state's going to require it be done, it's only fair that the state pay for it.

today's star editorial is more reasoned. the editorial insists that "the General Assembly must deliver true reform", but warns them not to do anything too stupid:

Daniels wants to write the caps into the state constitution, a move that would hinder state and local governments' ability to make needed adjustments in the future.

Legislators should be cautious about imposing unequal caps, and doubly skeptical of a constitutional amendment. Yet, as Daniels understands, any reform package that doesn't impose at least semi-permanent caps on property taxes falls short of providing a lasting solution.

as i said before, i don't see any real benefit of an amendment. yes, that makes it harder for future legislatures to screw up any "fixes", but it also makes it harder for them to unscrew any future problems. unless the point of the amendment is to intentionally suffocate local governments then i just don't get it.

finally, since i've gone on this long about property taxes, i might as well touch on the latest related blog scuffle. it seems the "fair tax" folks have been feeling snubbed by mayor-elect ballard since his election and have been venting their alienation over at their blog. new blog the accidental mayor picked up on the venting and quoted one post at length—though it didn't quote my favorite part of the post, which is this:

During his speech last night, Mayor elect Greg Ballard stated he did not run a negative campaign. That is 100% true. However, an effective week-by-week negative campaign was indeed organized, financed, and run. The dirty work of the negative campaign against Bart Peterson was done by rogue groups of activists, bloggers, you tube documenters, and street soldiers who took the personal hits and ridicule to do it for him. This was a critical strategy to prevent our pristine mayor's hands from being soiled with the dirty business of negative campaigning.

but anyway, gary welsh then latched onto the AM post and used it as an excuse to "out" jen wagner as the blogger behind AM and then call her a jealous, petty, greedy bitch (i'm paraphrasing).

as i noted weeks ago, the resemblance between AM and jen's TDW is so strong that AM is practically a carbon copy, so the only question regarding its authorship was whether jen was involved or whether someone else was merely copying her style and format. still, it struck me as odd that gary would out her like that. after all, gary was outraged last year when he thought that steph mineart had accused him of being behind the indyundercover blog (never mind that she said nothing of the sort). then earlier this year, when "the scribe" actually did accuse gary of being indyu, gary threatened to sue. and when someone sent gary evidence (supposedly unverifiable) that abdul hakim-shabazz and ike henderson were the ones behind indyu, gary asked them if it was true and then sat on the allegation when they denied it.

considering all that history, i was a bit surprised that gary would accuse jen of being AM without even confirming it with her. so i sent her an email, suggesting that if she wanted to deny the allegation, she should do it soon. in her reply, she confessed:

I have to sheepishly and belatedly admit that I am, indeed, Accidental Mayor. I've told folks in the media that I'm doing it, but I guess I just never posted anything about it when I added the link to my blogroll.

I made the decision shortly after the election that I needed to get the local stuff off TDW, since my focus there has always been on the Guv's Office and statewide politics. I heard Shella describe Ballard as the "accidental mayor" on election night, so I ran with it.

so there you have it. she clearly wasn't trying to hide her identity because she made no effort to change her author voice and the blog's format is identical to TDW, right down to the redundant quotation marks inside block quotes. (i've never understood those, and can't find any justification for them in the AP stylebook... they're definitely against chicago style.) but it would've been nice if she had officially announced that it was her blog when she started it, as she did with her other new blog, the media-focused bury the lede. apparently she forgot.¶

lobbying lessons

while he was campaigning, candidate greg ballard made some very specific promises about property taxes. from his campaign site:

As Mayor, I will:

1. Lobby the state legislature to pass a constitutional amendment eliminating property taxes in Indiana. I believe that with the current makeup of the legislature, 35-40% of legislators approve of such a measure.

2. Failing a state constitutional amendment, I will find an acceptable mix of taxes within Marion County to greatly reduce the influence of property taxes in Indianapolis. This will help bring the middle class back to Indianapolis, increasing the overall tax base and reducing the tax burden on the poor.

so... the legislature is in session and talking about property taxes, and greg ballard is there:

Indianapolis Mayor-Elect Greg Ballard listened to the early part of the debate from the House balcony, noting that his mere presence sends a message.

"I think we are seeing the fact that I got elected talking about this quite a bit, has already weighed in on this debate quite a bit so I hope that they hear that," Ballard said.

of course, lobbying the legislature takes a bit more than just showing up.

more than one of today's legislature stories read like that: the legislature met. ballard was there. he's interested in property taxes. only jim shella got the important detail:

Ballard won't testify, but says he will plan to make his feelings known in individual meetings with lawmakers.

that sounds like lobbying to me. so there you have it. looks like ballard is indeed lobbying the legislature for repeal. i guess i was wrong about that one. then again, part 1 was the easy part of that campaign promise. part 2 will be considerably more difficult.

still, the important issue is what should be done about property taxes. as i've said before, repeal is unworkable and unrealistic. property taxes bring in more than $6 million/year, and to make up for that lost revenue, other taxes would have to be raised to unacceptable levels. also, i share doug's reluctance about amending the constitution. ballard (and gary) think a constitutional amendment of some form or another is the bare minimum. i don't get that. i understand why someone would want to support tax caps or even repeal, but why the insistence on an amendment? with all the volatility in the mortgage market today, we don't know what things are going to be like a few years from now, let alone 10, 20, 50 years down the line. even if the governor's plan is perfect for 2007, that doesn't mean it'll still be good in 2107. maybe it's comforting to think that the permanence of an amendment means that the property tax issue will then be "fixed permanently", but i just don't see the real-world benefit of an amendment. ¶

bits & pieces

i'm in between freelance assignments, which is like being on vacation, so i have no excuse not to blog regularly. so here are some bits & pieces that on their own might not be enough for a full entry.

via abdul, we see that rishawn biddle apparently really dislikes julia carson. i'm having a hard time locating a single positive statement about julia in his "special report" over at the american spectator. (rishawn does point out that julia was "one of the first members of Congress to vocally oppose the War in Iraq", which i suspect he thought was a compliment, but the spectator's audience will not take it as such.) but on the other hand, it doesn't contain any racial slurs either, like the last time he wrote about julia, so that's a step up.

now that i'm no longer a homeowner, i'm virtually guaranteed to get screwed by any property tax relief plan. not totally reamed like lake county, but screwed nonetheless, because even if my landlord's taxes go way down, they're certainly not going to decrease my rent. that's okay; unlike some, i'm not going to oppose any change just because it won't help me personally. then again, i'm not going to assume any change is good, either. i'm not sold on the governor's plan—in particular i'm averse to amending the constitution—but something similar to his plan could work.

speaking of bits 'n pieces, milkshake masters steak 'n shake have been particularly hard-hit by the economic troubles that have been affecting the restaurant industry, as more people decide to eat at home or just grab something cheap. some locations are even considering the ultimate SNS blasphemy: reducing hours. i was particularly concerned on sunday night, when i drove to our local steak n shake to takhomasak for dinner, and the place appeared to be closed. as a result, i was forced to go to five guys instead (the food at five guys is great, but they don't have shakes). however, i've since confirmed that our local SNS (by the pyramids) is still open 24 hours, so sunday night must've been a fluke.

still, even with the restaurant industry's recent woes, the producers of fox's kitchen nightmares aren't getting a lot of applications from local restaurants to be featured on the show. on the show—my girlfriend's favorite; she's almost obsessed—star chef gordon ramsay tries to help a struggling restaurant turn its business around in one week. in the american version of the show, producers even spend a good chunk of change redesigning the restaurant interior, replacing busted kitchen equipment, and so on. if the show were to come to indianapolis, virago & i would definitely want to attend the reopening (hint to show producers), not so much to be on tv as to taste gordon's menu. though being on the show would be cool, too. ¶

lolcolts for you!

too obscure? don't get the joke? okay then, here's another:

i've started putting my lolcolts on flickr; you can view the whole set there. or you can click the "lolcolts" label below to be shown all the lolcolts posts from this blog.¶

moving forward

yesterday was a momentous occasion for me: i sold my house! and if you've been paying attention at all to the real estate climate, you know that's no minor accomplishment these days. the market nationally is in real trouble, and add marion county's property tax situation on top of that, and the result is that not a lot of houses are selling.

i used to live in a great house in meridian-kessler, just a couple blocks from miss ann's house, but after a few years everyone's personal situations changed and we all moved out. we put that bad boy on the market in march, where it sat for months. finally, one of our neighbors took a shine to it. at first she wasn't willing to offer enough—we weren't looking to make a huge profit, but we weren't going to lose money on the deal, either—but eventually she came around, and we closed on the deal yesterday.

it was a great place to live, but once we'd moved out, that house became an albatross around my neck. i was still paying hundreds a month on mortgage and utilities while it sat there unused, and as a freelancer, i don't have the steadiest revenue stream. as a result i was unable to really help virago out with rent and bills here at our pike-township apartment. this double-budgeting caused stress aplenty, but no longer.

yesterday was also a notable anniversary: one month with no nicotine. i had my last cigarette in august, and my last piece of nicotine gum on the day before halloween. while i haven't totally adjusted to the world of nonsmoking, on most days i don't even think about cigarettes, and even when i'm around them i don't crave them. i'm past that. but don't worry: i promised myself (as i promise you) that i wouldn't become one of those militant ex-smoker assholes. smoking is rather gross and annoying, but those militant ex-smokers are far more obnoxious. ¶

julia versus the blogs

yesterday, the indy star's token leftist columnist dan carpenter made a dig at the anti-julia blogs:

"Absolutely," Sarge Visher replied near the end of an overwhelming Monday at the workplace he runs, U.S. Rep. Julia Carson's home office on Fall Creek Parkway.

"The response we're getting to her situation is not what the blogs have been dishing up. These are nice people."

Weblogs, decidedly mixed and often vicious when it comes to treatment of his boss and friend, barely existed when she asked him to manage her first try for Congress back in 1996. The often-anonymous, increasingly influential gossip mills make a strong case that social change is not always progressive; and that makes for deep irony when they're aimed at Julia Carson.

indeed. yet ruth holladay objects:

But since Dan Carpenter in the Star yesterday referred to the "often vicious" treatment Rep. Carson received from bloggers, I feel a tiny obligation to enter the fray.

The blogs were in fact the only early and consistent truth-tellers about Carson's repeated health problems. The blogs addressed concerns, which now we know were valid, that she was extremely unwell. Before there were blogs, it was readers who called the Star, demanding coverage of the fact that Carson missed, at various times, so many votes in Congress. It was readers who got that story out in the open, not the Star's Washington bureau.

If the blogs were vicious, it was, perhaps, only because they were trying to do the job the Star should have done.

like clockwork, ruth's comments showed up in a post at antijulia advanceindiana.blogspot.com, where gary exhorts that "Carpenter would have fit right in with the reporters in the 1960s who covered up all the Kennedy scandals in the name of protecting Camelot."

now, i appreciate ruth's impulse to jump in and defend bloggers against criticism from mainstream media figures, but i have to wonder whether ruth has ever actually read the blogs that she's so quick to defend.

the anti-julia blogs routinely call her racist nicknames like "bag lady" and "ghetto queen". they insist that julia is the head of some corrupt, nefarious organization they call "the ghetto mafia", which they claim routinely took part in felonious activity such as widespread voter fraud.

even now, as julia presumably lays dying in hospice care, they continue to impugn her honor and integrity. and don't even get me started on the absurd rumor they're still trying to spread that andre carson is the illegitimate love child of julia and andy jacobs. or that julia practices voodoo. or the rumor about julia stealing some dude's wallet.

these are vile, hateful people who have relentlessly used every attack they can think of against julia, even after they've been debunked. to say that the blogs have been "decidedly mixed and often vicious" about julia is putting it lightly.

perhaps blogs were the first ones to question the congresswoman's health. as they say, even a stopped clock is right twice a day.¶

september eleven mentality: a video mashup

i was thinking about sampling or remixing this excellent montage by tpm even before wfmu created a contest for it. but the opportunity to win a bunch of wfmu swag was too much to resist. my initial attempts weren't going anywhere, until i came up with the idea for this video mashup. enjoy.

update: forgot to add a direct link to the youtube video in case the embedding code doesn't work for some readers.¶

julia has cancer

the big news today, even overshadowing the governor's horrible poll numbers, is the revelation that julia carson has terminal lung cancer. she released this statement yesterday:

In the late summer of 2007, Congress granted me a leave of absence because of my leg infection. My wonderful doctor cured the leg, and I went into rehabilitation, planning to be back in Washington shortly.

Then the second shoe fell -- heavily. My doctor discovered lung cancer. It had gone into remission years before, but it was back with a terminal vengeance.

Therefore, I take this occasion to express my loving and literally eternal gratitude to my friends, including family, constituents and colleagues, who have given me so much love, support and trust. God bless our beloved country.

as tully writes, julia's life was a real american success story: she rose from poverty to a seat in congress, where she was beloved by many of her constituents.

but as much as she is adored, there is a vocal minority that despises her and calls her racist names and other vile garbage at every opportunity. unsurprisingly, these scum are out in full force on the star's talkback forums.

i haven't had much to say about julia's health since she first went into the hospital a couple months back, primarily because i didn't know what was up and i wasn't going to give the julia haters any further ammunition. i know how these things work: whenever a media figure or liberal blogger writes so much as a single sentence that's critical of julia, that sentences ends up quoted, in isolation and out of context, somewhere like advance indiana. it wouldn't matter if everything else in the piece was glowing praise: the haters would latch onto that one critical sentence. and while AI generally prefers to ignore me, i wasn't going to give anyone the chance to use my words for another anti-julia attack.

now that the truth is out, i wish julia the best and hope she can live out her final days in relative peace. one component of this is that yes, she should resign her congressional post. i don't begrudge a dying woman her privacy for keeping her cancer a secret until now, but now that she's gone public with her illness, she should take the next step and resign with dignity. the district deserves someone strong and healthy in that seat, fighting to represent us in congress. and perhaps just as important, julia deserves her rest. she's had a long, successful career, and she's earned a break. terminal cancer is enough to deal with; she doesn't need the stress of politics on top of that. ¶

lolcoltsgiving

only one lolcolt this week. if you don't like it, make some yourself! you're lucky i'm still making 'em at all!

happy thanksgiving, everyone. we can go back to the partisan bickering tomorrow. ¶

why property tax repeal won't work

hat tip tdw, this one paragraph from the fort wayne journal-gazette says it all:

Hoosiers are most likely best served by a reasonable mix of various taxes and user fees, and that mix may well be out of balance. Data compiled by the Federation of Tax Administrators shows that in 2005, 35.8 percent of Indiana's state and local revenue came from property taxes, above the national average of 30.6 percent – and that number has likely risen since 2005.

emphasis mine. more than a third of the state's income comes from property taxes. that's an enormous amount of money, and a huge chunk of the budget.

if we repeal or even modestly trim back property taxes, we have to do something to offset the lost revenue: either cut spending, raise other taxes, or both. the legislature is not going to cut a third of its budget this year. ain't gonna happen. which leaves raising other taxes: the ones that are named most often are sales and income taxes. yet some in the legislature are reluctant to raise the sales tax by even one percent, because that would make indiana's sales tax higher than neighboring states. they definitely won't want to raise it 2-3% or more.

whatever taxes you raise, you're going to end up with "winners and losers", as niki kelly says. niki did the math, looking at the daniels and kenley plans for cutting property taxes (not repealing, just cutting), and discovered that she'll actually pay more taxes under both plans. multiply the numbers in niki's article by about 3 to get a glimpse of what would happen if property taxes were repealed. retirees living on fixed incomes might make out pretty well, and the people who live in half-million dollar houses on meridian street might be a bit better off, but those of us who work and buy stuff would be hit pretty badly.

so in a way it's good that mayor-elect ballard is backing away from his promise to support repeal. other than eric miller, he was the state's highest-profile proponent of repeal, and if he now realizes it's impossible then hopefully the whole "repeal movement" will die down. (i've been getting a lot of guff over at abdul's place for pointing out ballard's flip-flop. most of them just tell me i'm stupid, which is pretty typical over there, but one of them calls me "stAllidiot!", which i quite like. they seem to believe that ballard hasn't flip-flopped and actually will lobby for repeal in the future. i guess we'll have to wait and see on that one.) ¶

ballard: my first broken promise

the indy star mentioned it first. then the accidental mayor blog was the first to draw attention to it. then, state dem party chair dan parker put out a press release. mayor-elect ballard has already flip-flopped on property taxes, only a week after being elected, and before he even takes office.

the abduls of the world can hem and haw and say that ballard hasn't really changed his position here. but he has. here is the promise, directly from the property taxes page of his campaign site:

1. Lobby the state legislature to pass a constitutional amendment eliminating property taxes in Indiana. I believe that with the current makeup of the legislature, 35-40% of legislators approve of such a measure.

2. Failing a state constitutional amendment, I will find an acceptable mix of taxes within Marion County to greatly reduce the influence of property taxes in Indianapolis. This will help bring the middle class back to Indianapolis, increasing the overall tax base and reducing the tax burden on the poor.

pretty simple, huh? basic, straightforward language, right? in order to keep this promise, ballard doesn't need to actually get property taxes repealed. all he has to do to keep this promise is lobby the legislature for a constitutional amendment. then, when that fails, he can go on to find another solution.

has ballard lobbied for an amendment? no. will he? apparently not, if he now supports the governor's plan. so if he promised to do X, has not done X, and has no intention of doing X, then there's no other way to look at it: he's broken a campaign promise. and he isn't even in office yet!

it would've been such an easy promise to keep! after all, candidate ballard had to know that the mayor has no power to actually do anything about property taxes. all he had to do was some token lobbying, then when it inevitably failed he could get behind the mitch daniels plan. easy as pie, campaign promise kept. but no, he couldn't even do that. he can't even be bothered to respond to questions about his flip-floppery.

not that i'm surprised. property tax repeal for indiana truly is a radical, fringe idea, and ballard's support for it was one of many reasons that i and people like me never took him seriously as a candidate. it's the kind of thing that sounds nice as a one-sentence poll question—hey, do you want to pay less taxes?—but like i said over at doug's place, just about everyone who's actually looked at the numbers know it's not feasible. property taxes bring in billions of dollars that fund our schools and other important stuff. you can't just get rid of them without doing something major to offset all that lost revenue, like massive increases to sales and income taxes, which would do plenty damage on their own.

the only question is: will the tax protesters now turn on the mayor-elect, their once-hero?

oh, and one more question: when will someone create ballardlies.com? ¶

lolcolts face the music

another week, another edition of lolcolts. i can has victory over kansas city this week? ¶

i get mail... about doctor octagon ii

remember way back in january 2006 when i wrote about dr octagon ii? no?

dr octagon ii was a fake record, a bootleg in the true meaning of the word. some shady operators knew that rapper kool keith had been talking about doing a sequel to his highly successful dr octagon record from the mid-90s, so they got their hands on some kool keith recordings and rushed it to the market under the title "dr octagon ii".

at the time, i blogged about the record, linking to a fan alert (now deleted), quoting this passage:

The album has been bootleged by 101 Distribution, in association with Real Talk Records and 33rd Street Records. The album has already been shipped and is in stores as of October 12th. It cannot be recalled. The album features 2 demos, 2 Clayborne Family tracks, and 6 INCOMPLETE tracks from the upcoming 7th Veil album. The cover of the album features Kool Keith standing in front of an Escalade, which he is not even down with. 101 Distribution, Real Talk, and 33rd Street are being sued for this release. According to Jacky Jasper, the official bootlegger is Michael Kinbrew (a.k.a. Scoobie) and his partner Damon Evans. Supposedely, these two have stolen records from Kurrupt and had false negotiation agreements with Kel of "Kenan and Kel" (Nickelodeon). HipHopSite.com has already recalled the album. Some albums have slipped through the cracks and made it into stores.

i thought the story was pretty much over when the real dr octagon sequel came out five months later, which i loved. but apparently not, because this morning i received this email:

hi stallio,

we came across this link on your site and wanted to speak to you about the validity of its details. 101 did not release the Kool Keith Dr. Octogon Returns bootleg. the fact is, micheal kimbrew sold the title to 33rd Street/ Bayside after we verified the album was not official. while it is true 101 did talk with michael kimbrew just out of sheer interest, tracking the barcode with soundscan will prove no connection between 101 distribution, damon evans and this title or any of the parties you mention in your report.

would it be possible to update this information. it's simply not true.

kind regards,
Damon Evans
Executive Director,
101 DISTRIBUTION
www.101d.com

so there you have it. damon evans of 101 distribution officially denies having anything to do with the bootleg. i of course have no idea who put it out; i was simply quoting from a page on koolkeith.co.uk.¶

meet the new rishawn biddle

tdw notes that rishawn biddle has found someone new willing to pay for his prose: the american spectator! no word on whether this is a one-time thing or a new regular gig, nor is there any word on whether rishawn was hired in ignorance of, in spite of, or because of the controversy surrounding him. (considering the spectator's contributor list i wouldn't be surprised if the answer is "because of".)

his spectator byline mentions that he's "the proprietor of dropoutnation.net," and what do you know, rishawn has a new blog titled "dropout nation". education has always been a pet issue for rishawn, so this is probably a good fit for him: having a themed blog will keep him focused so he'll be less likely to get into any real trouble. there's not much there yet but i'm sure it'll pick up steam soon, as rishawn is known to be verbose.

furthermore, while rishawn let the eponymous rishawnbiddle.com expire and turn into a spam farm long ago, i see that he has another personal domain: rishawnbiddle.org. there's not much to this site either, just a splash page with a photo of a homeless man (why, rishawn, why?) and PDFs of some old star editorials he wrote. the page's frame-based, clumsy design leads me to suspect that it was an old site he had lying around, and he's just using it to host his email, but he might decide to update it sometime.¶

entropy, death, and rebirth

one of the lingering questions in the local blogosphere is "what now?" before the election, some of the city's highest-profile right-wing blogs had the express function of ranting frothily about the peterson administration and his fellow democrats. now that peterson is out and republicans control the city-county council, what happens to those blogs?

indy undercover seems to have no purpose if republicans control city government (unless the FOP turns on ballard and the council), and the blog may be shut down. or it might continue on as a ballard-boosting law-enforcement blog and simply shut down its controversial comments section. if the blog dies, the mystery surrounding the identity of its author "joe friday" will likely die with it.

in contrast, the fringe "bart lies" site brought about its own obsolescence by using such a specific name. that site will surely die, though if the site's second splash page is any indication those folks will be teaming up with the "fair tax" folks, who promise they aren't going away. once they fail to get property taxes repealed, they plan to move on to harrassing local school boards.

meanwhile, sir hailstone is taking a break. presumably he intends to return to blogging, but we all know that in the blogging world "taking a break" sometimes means "no new posts for months if ever". hailstone's "digital farmers" blog has been getting a lot of kudos from other right-wing bloggers recently for his role in the ballardosphere. this may be a surprise to longtime readers, who might remember him from his failed primary campaign, his multiple blog purges to remove embarrassing material, and that time he put out a "hit" for gossip about "that tdw bitch".

as the anti-bart blogs die off, new species of blogs are being born. the wave of the future is the anti-ballard blog. at least two such blogs have been spotted in the wild. one is keep indy honest. there isn't much to this blog yet other than righteous anger and two single-paragraph posts. another, the wonderfully named accidental mayor, is a bit more substantial, with a suprising amount of quality content considering it's only been up for four days. the accidental mayor blog feels like a marion-county-focused taking down words, but that might just be because they're both typepad blogs with similar designs. at any rate, it's off to a promising start.

and speaking of TDW, a few trolls on various blogs have been suggesting that that TDW would die off following this year's election failures. don't believe it. as TDW has repeatedly pointed out, she works for the state party, not the county democrats, and overall democrats did pretty well in indiana this year.¶

lolcolts!

another game day, another batch of lolcolts! (for last week's lolcolts click here.)¶

is the ballard honeymoon over?

candidate greg ballard was a cipher, an enigma. the people who voted for him didn't know much more about him than they knew about noob saibot. so now that ballard is our mayor-elect, there have been two primary fears about what kind of administration he's going to build.

right-wingers and ballard supporters have feared that ballard might stack his administration with establishment republicans and longtime party hacks, effectively selling out the grassroots political revolution they were convinced they'd been a part of. meanwhile, democrats and progressives feared that he'd load up his staff with the types of fringe characters who were ballard's most-vocal online supporters—in other words, we were afraid of an entire administration full of "bart lies" types.

mayor-elect ballard has now named his transition team, and if the names there are any indication, he plans to do both.

the list is chock full of GOP insiders, and gary welsh for one is ticked off about it. for one thing, the transition team includes both marion county prosecutor carl brizzi and former US attorney susan brooks. gary supported brizzi in last year's election, but these days he doesn't care for either brizzi or brooks, because they never prosecuted marion county democrats for alleged corruption. beyond that, the team contains two partners from the law firm ice miller, which has close ties to outgoing mayor peterson. and there are also two partners from barnes & thornburg, another high-powered law firm that donated $20,000 to peterson's re-election. (barnes & thornburg has also been in the news in the past couple years because two of its attorneys have had to resign because of their ties to disgraced lobbyist jack abramoff.)

at the same time, ballard appointed darla y williams to be his liason with the peterson administration. in addition to having the most hideously incoherent blog layout i've ever seen, darla is well-known as someone who has a long-standing personal grudge against mayor peterson, and whose past job performance has been questionable at best. she's the type of person who's prone to go off on long-winded rants about the "ghetto mafia". in other words, appointing her to be the liason to the peterson administration, where she will have to work day-in day-out with mayor peterson and his aides for the next two months, is like extending an enormous middle finger. it's like appointing miss ann or sir hailstone—both of whom seem to be big darla williams fans. you couldn't pick someone who would be more overtly hostile if you tried.

both gary and jen at tdw speculate that the more experienced members of the transition team will deal with the darla problem soon enough. and there are signs that it might have already happened: wilson notes that darla's name mysteriously doesn't appear in this morning's star article about the transition team. one can only hope that ballard has already cut her loose. ¶

check out these awesome sandwich bags i found

i probably should've bought some. i mean, who couldn't use some awesome sandwich bags?

was biddle's contract violated?

ruth holladay reports that the newspaper guild is investigating rishawn biddle's firing. apparently the guild's contract with the star was not followed:

A Star insider notes that management "completely ignored the due process outlined in the union contract... They have to inform the Guild in writing whenever they terminate someone, and they didn't even bother to do that."

apparently the star didn't send that written notification to the guild about biddle's firing until two days later.

ruth also has a public statement from rishawn, but it doesn't have much that we don't already know: rishawn regrets what he wrote and is no longer with the star.

but the most interesting tidbit on ruth's blog is this:

FYI, sources inside the newsroom speculate that Dennis Ryerson and Barbara Henry are untouchable in this matter, and Tim Swarens will also survive. Apparently, this is not the only blog-related fiasco to occur at 307 N. Penn, but in other cases, the "mistakes" were made by non-employees -- you know, those freelancers -- and caught before they went online.

ruth speculates that these prior blog "mistakes" were made by freelancers—the star pays a lot of freelance reporters and editors who are thus technically not "employees". but if i had to guess, my money would be on the problems occurring over at INtouch, the star's "random folks we picked up off the street" blog. the standard of conversation there has always been far lower than at expresso, and as i've pointed out before on this blog, rishawn biddle was not the first person to have been "deleted" from the star blogs. the first i know of was jocelyn tandy-adande. and considering the kinds of garbage that was in her edited posts, i can only imagine what didn't get through.¶

who is greg ballard?

the link on the star front page says it all: who is greg ballard?

he's just won the indianapolis mayoral election, and yet after months of campaigning i really have no clue who the guy is other than that he's an ex-marine and he's Not-Bart-Peterson. apparently that was enough for some 77,000+ naptown residents.

mayor peterson is perhaps the first major victim of the property tax crisis. he didn't cause the problem; the governor and the legislature are the primary culprits there (and are surely quaking in their boots now that they've witnessed the fall of so many incumbents today). but the mayor and the city-county council weren't proactive enough about preventing property taxes from going up, and so they went way up for some unlucky souls. in the end, the GOP did a better job motivating their people to get to the polls.

i sincerely hope that greg ballard is everything his supporters say he is, because we're now stuck with the guy for four years. he certainly never demonstrated to me that he was a legitimate candidate; his own party never really took him that seriously. so here's hoping that he manages to put together a competent staff and some kind of coherent plan. it's easy to stand around proclaiming that "we can do better", but now that he actually has the job, we'll see how well he does.

update: the fact that democrats seem to be doing well in other parts of the state further demonstrates that the GOP wins in marion county are primarily about anger over property taxes, not some sort of major republican resurgence.¶

don't be like ballard: vote

it didn't seem right to post anything non–colts-related yesterday, especially after that close loss at the end. but it's a new day: the day before the election.

the hot rumor circulating the blogs this weekend is true: greg ballard did not vote back in 2003. the man wants to be mayor, but four years ago he couldn't even be arsed with voting for mayor. that really shows a commitment to the city and its problems, don't you think? i guess we'll see how many of his supporters decide to emulate their hero by staying home tomorrow, and how many one-up their man and actually vote.

but let me say this, my fellow hoosiers: if you're smart enough and plugged-in enough to be reading this blog, you should definitely get out there and vote. if for no other reason, do it so that when you run for future office, future wilson allens won't be able to dig up your voting record and leak it to the press.

in other happenings...

star editor dennis ryerson printed a column about the rishawn biddle situation. there's not much new in the column; even the apparent refusal to refer to biddle by name is not new. and while it addresses complaints about biddle's firing, it does not address the most important questions. namely, rishawn's ramblings apparently did not have to go through an editor before they got posted to expresso, as other star blogs do. why not? and how much responsibility does the star share for creating the environment where rishawn could post whatever nonsense he wanted without a filter, and for hiring an editorial writer who had previously been fired for shoddy work?

also, abdul has a post titled was rishawn wrong? if anything, abdul's post demonstrates exactly what was wrong about rishawn's post, as abdul is able to make pretty much the same argument as rishawn did, but without being offensive or pulling out his thesaurus of 19th century racial slurs.

in answer to abdul's question, i again have to say yes. black politicians face far more scrutiny than white politicians do, simply because they're black. there are tons of non-black politicians in indiana who behave horribly, but people don't group them together and wonder whether, for example, white politicians in lawrence reinforce stereotypes of white people as being rich, amoral, stuck-up assholes. plus, the fact that abdul himself can off the top of his head list a half-dozen black marion-county democrats who he has no problems with suggests that there isn't anything uniquely bad about black politicians or even marion county black politicians; there are simply fewer of them than white politicians and they get far more scrutiny.

beyond that, the rishawn saga has pretty much boiled over. it did hit the AP wire and a few national blogs, but for the most part didn't get a lot of national attention, and locally everyone has gone back to talking about the election. so things could've gone a lot worse for rishawn, but he's probably not breathing any sighs of relief, either.

update: i almost forgot... i wanted to mention the parallels between what i was saying about about black politicians facing more scrutiny and the recent national discussion about whether hillary clinton "played the gender card" recently. (of course, it doesn't matter whether hillary did play such a card, only whether the media decides she did, which they apparently have. but that's an unrelated point.)

black politicians face far more scrutiny than whites, but they can't easily acknowledge this in public or they get accused of playing the race card. similarly, part of the animus against hillary clearly is that she is a female, but she can't really come out and say that without the media freaking out. read garance's tapped post about what she calls "the secondary conversation" for more. ¶

lolcolts

my fellow hoosiers, i have a vision. that vision can be summed up with one word: lolcolts.

in an ideal world, the internet would be full of lolcolts. the good news is that this ideal world can become a reality. but i can't do it by myself!

that's where you come in. go out there and make more lolcolts. i have given you a first example above, based on a photo by aj macht. if you need inspiration, go here and then go here. maybe open each site in a separate tag and toggle between them; i don't know. however you do it, go out there and make more lolcolts!

update: here's another to make sure you're on the right track:

thanks to mike for spreading the meme.

2nd update: you can view all my lolcolts posts by clicking the "lolcolts" label below.¶

biddle story hits fox news/AP wire

the job market for rishawn biddle just got harder, as news of his firing has now hit the AP wire, including foxnews.com:

INDIANAPOLIS — The editor of The Indianapolis Star publicly apologized Thursday for what he and community leaders considered racially offensive comments posted by an editorial writer on one of the newspaper's blogs.

Editorial columnist RiShawn Biddle's posting on the online discussion board criticized City-County Council President Monroe Gray, who, like Biddle, is black. The blog, titled "Expresso," referred to Gray and other city Democrats using language that both the Star's editor and elected officials called offensive and unacceptable.

The language has since been removed from the site, and Editor Dennis Ryerson said at a news conference at Martin Luther King Jr. Park that the writer was no longer with the paper. Ryerson declined to say whether the writer was fired or resigned.

the story has now gone national, virtually ensuring that rishawn's name will pop up in dozens if not hundreds of newspapers and news sites across the country (and the net) tomorrow.

on the bright side, the offending post has finally been deleted from the star's servers, where it remained hidden but readable for some 30 hours after ostensibly being "removed".

update: see also romenesko at poynteronline.

2nd update: matthew felling writes this insightful post for cbs's public eye blog.¶

a candidacy denied

south carolina democrats have determined that they will keep stephen colbert off the ballot:

This essentially means that Colbert’s short lived White House run in the Palmetto State will come to an end, because he has said that he would not try to be placed on the Republican Party primary ballot.

The state party's executive council met this afternoon in Columbia to decide which Democratic candidates met the criteria to be placed on the ballot. To be placed on the South Carolina ballot a candidate must demonstrate national viability as well as campaign in the state.

Colbert, who officially filed papers to get on the ballot this morning, lost a roll call vote, 13-3.

Meanwhile, presidential long shots, Rep. Dennis Kucinich and former Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel, made the cut.

colbert was actually polling higher than kucinich and gravel. 0% doesn't seem all that viable to me. ¶

biddle reactions from across the web

today mayor peterson, state rep william crawford, and other local politicians staged a press conference about the rishawn biddle controversy, which forced the indy star to actually report on the story. note however that the story carefully avoids mentioning rishawn by name:

The criticism of the newspaper stemmed from an editorial columnist's online discussion board posting, known as a blog, that criticized City-County Council President Monroe Gray.

The blog referred to Gray and other city Democrats using language that both the Star's editor and elected officials called offensive and unacceptable.

Dennis Ryerson, editor of the Star, said he ordered the posting removed as soon as he became aware of it and apologized on behalf of the paper.

He said the employee who posted the comments is no longer employed by the paper and that the comments did not follow the paper's standards.

"I want the Star to be, like the mayor said of the city, a model of civility," Ryerson said. "The Internet should be a center of electronic dialogue, not diatribe."

of course, the post was "removed" from expresso but remains on the server even today.

gary welsh's reaction to the press conference is predictable. to gary, everything is evidence of an all-encompassing antidemocratic conspiracy by "the carson machine", and this is no exception. in garyzarro world, biddle was fired for daring to criticize the Powers-That-Be, not for throwing around racially offensive language like "coonery". never mind that just yesterday gary admitted that the post in question remained offensive even after the "zip coon" part was removed.

ruth holladay asks whether biddle deserved to be fired, suggesting that ryerson and the star share a large part of the blame for creating an environment where biddle could post such nonsense without an editor's approval. to be sure, this incident is embarrassing for ryerson: not only does the star have trouble keeping racist, offensive comments off its talkback pages, but it can't even prevent its own employees from posting offensive material.

doug thinks rishawn's firing "[s]eems like a bit of a loss" because rishawn "seemed like a nice enough guy". while i'm sure that in his actual day-to-day personal life rishawn is nice enough, i always thought that he came off as a bit of an arrogant, condescending twit in his online posting and debating.

abdul thinks there's a bit of a double standard going, because democrats weren't equally up in arms when city-county council attorney aaron haith referred to abdul as "the grandson of willie lynch". there may be some validity to this, but then again, the two acts are hardly in the same league. as i said in the comments at tdw, haith made a spontaneous, one-sentence, offensive remark. rishawn, in contrast, wrote a nine-paragraph screed that was loaded with offensive language, which he went back and edited four times and yet is still offensive. haith's mistake was arguably a crime of passion done in the heat of the moment; biddle's was clearly premeditated, and directed toward the public. hell, rishawn was so proud of his race-baiting garbage that he sent out an email bragging about it. i have to wonder whether any of this would've even happened if he hadn't sent out that email.

and besides, by complaining about his own incident and not condemning biddle, abdul is being just as partisan and hypocritical as he complains the other side is being. it cuts both ways, chief.

melyssa aka miss ann, as usual, uses this as an opportunity to talk about herself. she is still ranting about how an IFD chief allegedly called her a "bull dyke" months ago. i say "allegedly" because, unlike abdul's complaint, there is no actual evidence that this ever happened. melyssa herself didn't even overhear the comment; some dude said it happened, so that is enough for her to post about it on 20 different blogs for months on end. personally, i have no reason to believe what some dude said, and i am immediately skeptical of any claims that arise from the "bart lies" crowd. but if it actually did happen, then she's right, that's disgusting and worthy of condemnation.

indy undercover unsurprisingly jumps at the chance to complain about "democraps". indyu's argument is the same as abdul's (only not as well-written), but the post is interesting in that the commenters are actually more offensive than rishawn's original post: one of them even makes zip coon jokes. that's classy!

various anonymous commenters at various right-leaning blogs defend rishawn on free-speech grounds, which of course doesn't really apply. rishawn is more than welcome to restart his old blogspot blog and do nothing but reprint lyrics from hair for all anyone cares. but the indy star has no obligation to give him blog space on their servers for his ramblings, nor to cut him a paycheck for doing so. plenty of us are out here blogging for free on our own time—in fact, i really need to finish up this entry and get back to work myself.

that's all the coverage of the issue i've seen online, aside from tdw and other things i've linked to in previous posts. but with this morning's press conference, i wouldn't be surprised if this story sticks around for another news cycle or two.

update: gary welsh is now demanding ryerson's resignation because ryerson attended this morning's press conference. it seems reasonable to me that the editor of the paper might want to appear at a press conference attacking his newspaper, in order to defend himself. but to gary it's an outrage!

2nd update:luke ford (who conducted the infamous "little black book" interview) picks up on rishawn's firing and writes:

I knew RiShawn when he lived in Los Angeles and interviewed him Feb. 25, 2003.

I once wrote that he was the only darkie in a room of pale faces (at a panel at AFI). He reproved me for the word "darkie." He said it was racist. I removed the word.

Biddle worked at Forbes. He was fired when his notes couldn't substantiate one of his stories (quotes). He went to the Los Angeles Business Journal and then to the Indianapolis Star as an editorial writer.

ford also quotes from this column by richard prince about rishawn's firing.¶