KGO Host (Bernie Ward) Indicted on Child Porn Charges

[Newsjock]

Source: KCBS

Longtime Bay Area talk show host Bernie Ward has been indicted on two federal Internet child pornography charges. In a brief court appearence this morning he pled not guilty.

Ward, a self described progressive and former Catholic priest, hosts the weeknight Bernie Ward Show and the Sunday morning Godtalk show on KGO Radio.

Ward’s criminal attorney, Doran Weinberg, told KCBS that Ward was researching child pornography for a book four years ago. He said Ward's actions caught the attention of federal authorities then, but charges weren't filed until now.

“Even though their investigation has not uncovered any hint of involvement in child pornography by Bernie other than the accessing of these few images, they’ve none the less decided to proceed on the argument that he violated the law, whatever his purpose was,” said Weinberg.

Read more: http://www.kcbs.com/KGO-Host-Indicted-on-Child-Porn-Charges/1296159

[TomInTib]

1. Ah, the Pete Townshend defense.

What the heck, it worked for Pete.

[NashVegas]

83. It's Not Necessarily an Inaccurate One

Pete had demonstrated an interest in the subject as far back as Tommy. Artists will look at things most of society fears to, or at least fears admitting to. He was also documenting his actions. *He* went to the police, voluntarily, before his name was ever even mentioned.

This guy, I don't know. It would really suck if he was perpetuating the situation.

[Frank Cannon]

101. I have no doubt that Pete had a long-time interest in the subject

Come on. Who really needs to "research" child pornography to write a book about it? There are a lot of true crime books written and the authors, to my knowledge, never killed anyone.

[onenote]

161. and you realize, of course, that Townshend's computers contained no illegal images

and child porn charges were dropped against him and even one of the leading advocates for victims of child porn, Phoenix Survivors, which had initially condemned Townshend, subsequently publicly criticized the authorities for their treatment of Townshend.

From Scotland Yard: "After four months of investigation by officers from Scotland Yard's child protection group, it was established that Mr Townshend was not in possession of any downloaded child abuse images. He has fully co-operated with the investigation."

From Phoenix Survivors: "Based on the evidence secured by the police and the facts, as we now know them, it is our humble opinion that Mr Townshend should never have been placed on the Sex Offenders Register, it is a gross injustice and a complete waste of tax payers money, let alone an unnecessary drain on the sex offender management teams woefully inadequate and precious resources."

[progressivebydesign]

172. No, but most crime writers own books and images about crime. n/t

[Frank Cannon]

201. It's not illegal to own books and images about crime

What I'm saying is, you don't have to commit the crime to write about it.

Larry Craig should have just said he was "researching" anonymous sexual encounters in public restrooms in order to write a book about them.

[Horse with no Name]

2. Wow.

I would like to hope he was targeted and that he was really researching a book.
Anything else...he gets what he deserves.

[LLee]

89. Bernie Ward

Of course he was targeted... from what I read, this was a one time deal for research in 2004...He has mentioned a book on his show.. this is a f-ing witch hunt. If a one time porn look up was in the computer of Rush, O'really in 2004, do you suppose there would be charges or blasted all over the press?

[MADem]

148. He is also accused of DISTRIBUTING child porn in a chat room.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/12/07/MNFHTPMQD.DTL

[progressivebydesign]

173. I'm not proclaiming him guilty or not, but supposedly it was part of the research too.

If you read the article, that's what he and his lawyer claim. He had also previously partnered with a newspaper to investigate child abuse by the catholic church, back in the 90s. Supposedly he had no images on his computer... but this is for the court to decide.

[MADem]

194. Well, it wasn't just some Bushie prosecutor deciding to charge him. This case went to a

SAN FRANCISCO grand jury, and THEY made the call. He had to have an 'image' at some point if he provided one to an agent posing as a fellow traveller in that chat room. The two counts are not necessarily two "images" -- count one is downloading, count two is providing.

[MADem]

199. Well....if I were in that sort of a fix, I'd show the grand jury my notes, my rough draft of my

book, my contract with a publishing house...ANYTHING. The "research for my book" excuse is the oldest one in the book.

There's no book that's been published. I checked Amazon.

The way you keep things off your computer hard drive is to have REMOVABLE hard drives, or download to floppies or other media. So that's not proof of anything.

The FBI have him entering a chat room and downloading AND providing images. Surely they have "chat" to go along with that.

It's a Grand Jury, of ostensibly liberal people in liberal San Francisco, not the FEDS, who indicted him.

He'd better have a GOOD lawyer, is all I'm saying.

[hunter]

205. What's got you going, really, I want to know...

Why so quick to hang Bernie Ward on the very little information we've got?

What horse have you got in this race?

What I see is an indictment signed by the Bush Administration Justice Department. That has zero credibility with me. It's essentially crap. Starting with John Ashcroft and his blue curtains over naked statues, Roberto Gonzalez, etc., some of these guys are twisted head cases.

For all we know now this case may blow up in their faces. I'd find it highly amusing if the Justice Department was running it's own internet child pornography empire for purposes of entrapment.

Bernie Ward was an obvious target, the sound bites "former Catholic Priest" and "left wing agitator" and "San Francisco" were probably all they needed to get their undergarments in a knot and start them dancing.

If I was Ward's boss I'd be happy for him to come to work on Monday if he wanted to, it would be a wild show, but I'm sure Ward's lawyer would advise him not to.

"Innocent until proven guilty" is just that. Right now this is just the right wing throwing shit to see what sticks.

[MADem]

210. It wasn't BUSH that did this--it was a San Francisco Grand Jury.

A bunch of liberals heard the evidence and said, this shit is going to court.

He downloaded images, and he PROVIDED images, according to the indictment. He did this via a chat room. No one held a gun to his head and forced him to click the keys that brought him to that chat room.

Innocent Until Proven Guilty is a concept for the courts, not for discussion boards. People are allowed to have opinions. We are not the judge, nor the jury, and our opinions aren't taken into account by any of those folks.

I dislike child molesters. I am in the "This guy has some 'splainin' to do" camp. I'm not at torches and pitchforks yet, but I am over with the crowd asking these sorts of questions: "Yeah, sure--where's your fucking BOOK, pal? Where's your rough draft? Your notes? Your interviews? Who did you talk to while you were doing this "research" for this "book?" Cough 'em up, like a HAIRBALL--now!!"

Anyone who can put partisan politics ahead of the protection of children is just not on MY team. There's no mitigation available, as far as I am concerned. Sorry if you can't deal with that, but that's how it is with me.

[hunter]

215. Ooooh. San Francisco Liberals.

Bernie Ward was a Catholic Priest too.

Yep, that's all we need to know...

Personally I think San Francisco is full of PBS liberals -- basically they are conservatives who don't like to wear ties, don't feel threatened by gay people, and are not overtly racist in their outlook.

But ignoring outward appearances, San Francisco is much like Chicago or any other cosmopolitan U.S. city.

That's what stinks about this whole thing, the action words: Child Pornography, San Francisco, former Catholic priest. Mix them all up in a John Ashcroft Justice Department and you get a toxic slime, but not any truth.

[MADem]

217. Oh, pardon me--they're so conservative they send right wingers to Congress. NOT.

The overall 'tone' of SF is LIBERAL. Like Massachusetts.

And Chicago, despite having a strong Democratic base, has a few more Republicans overall than SF does.

I'll say it one more time--no one held a gun to the guy's head and FORCED him to sit at his computer, enter a chat room, download these dreadful images, and "PROVIDE" images as well--downloading MIGHT--maybe, if you're totally computer stupid--be accidental, but PROVIDING takes a little work.

Now, maybe he has an explanation for all that, and maybe he doesn't. But to suggest that he was "set up" by BushCo, when he PROVIDED images -- when these are HIS actions -- is a bit WOOWOO/tinfoilish to me. No, I'll go a little further--it's fucking IDIOTIC. And like others, I am inclined to think the "research" excuse is bullshit.

But hey, we'll see, now, won't we?

Like I said, I was SHOCKED when the merry, friendly, gentle-appearing Frugal Gourmet was found to be a perv who preyed on kids. A lot of times that avuncular, cheery, well meaning fellow in public has the soul of that creep on the walker in the FAMILY GUY cartoon. You can't tell just by looking, and you sure as hell can't tell just by someone's publicly stated political affiliations, either.

And anyone who says you can is lying.

[hunter]

225. So molesting actual kids is the moral equivalent of looking at pictures on the internet?

If so, why is it okay for government investigators to trade in these images, maintain huge databases of these images, and get away with it by claiming they do it for purposes of creating electronic "fingerprint files," finding sexual predators and their victims, or simple entrapment? How come it's okay for them to hire people with very obvious sexual issues to investigate and set up the mechanisms for detecting such crime?

I'm curious... does viewing these images really buy a person a one way ticket straight to hell? If the jury in a child porn trial asks to see the photos are they endangering their mortal souls?

I'm pretty much a socialist on issues of human rights, a flaming libertarian on issues of free speech, and a hard-core environmentalist. That makes everyone in the U.S. legislature look like a conservative to me. On my own political scales Diane Feinstein is an old style military-industrial-complex conservative, Barbara Boxer is reasonably middle of the road, and Ralph Nader is a right wing freak.

Gavin Newsom represents San Francisco, and the only difference between him and other big city U.S. mayors is that he has a more interesting menagerie of special interests to deal with, and he's not afraid to support gay marriage... well, at least so far as that support does not interfere with his greater political ambitions. He's sorta like Arnold Schwarzenegger in that respect, and I find Arnold to be a particularly loathsome political creature -- an opportunist of the worst kind who always choses the political path best for Arnold, and maybe not the less fortunate people he represents. Don't stand too near when he's driving some hydrogen powered Humvee.

So that's where I am on the political spectrum. But I'm also a married man with kids in school and a mortgage.

I too was shocked when the Frugal Gourmet was found to be a sexual predator. I do all the cooking in our household, yet I'm not much interested in food. I learned enough about cooking watching his shows that my family doesn't drive me out in the desert somewhere and leave me. My meals are almost good enough now, as opposed to how I ate every day when I was single -- some variation of rice & beans, and whatever fruits and vegetables came my way. I had a girlfriend who used to joke I'd be happy eating Purina Monkey Chow every day, and that might be true.

So there I was, a fan of the Frugal Gourmet, and the father and uncle of young children, and yes, I was very upset.

Nevertheless, I believe these extreme reactions to mere images on a computer monitor are making the problem worse by driving the worst predators, the ones who actually harm children, the ones who actually take the pictures, deeper underground.

Yes, the guy who downloads a few images out of curiosity might be someone to watch, and probably not someone you'd trust to baby sit your kids, but it's not the sort of thing that lives and careers should be ruined over, and it's not the sort of crime the Frugal Gourmet committed.

That said, I'm still not convinced there is any merit at all to these charges because of the many outright falsehoods and violations of human rights the Bush Justice Department has promoted. The indictment against Bernie Ward is signed by people whose word is simply not trustworthy. That's where I leave it for now.

[MADem]

232. Yes, it does buy you a ticket straight to hell. That image is of a victim and often a perpetrator.

That victim is not for 'exploitation' or 'enjoyment.' To suggest that's somehow "OK" is pretty fucking sick. IMO. Victimization is bad enough, revictimization is reprehensible.

A jury seeing the photographs as evidence doesn't have the same purpose or intent at all. Same goes for law enforcement.

I really think you don't get it. It says something, something not good, about a society that won't protect the most defenseless among us.

And Mister Ward provided pictures in that chat room two days before Christmas on 04. And he provided pictures between 1-13 Jan of the following year.

Yeah, read that again-- he PROVIDED before he RECEIVED, according to the indictment.

http://abclocal.go.com/three/kgo/bernie_ward_indictment.pdf

Where did he get those images he provided? After all, he hadn't yet 'received' any.

He does have some 'splainin' to do. Where there's smoke, there's often fire.

Who are these 'untrustworthy' people who signed the indictment? You know the foreperson of the grand jury? I can't read that signature to save my life--can't tell if that's Jane, John, James or whatever. You know Andrew Oosterbaan, the Section Chief of the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section? You personally know that Steven Grocki, the trial lawyer, is 'untrustworthy?'

If you actually do have information to suggest these individuals are unreliable, it would contribute to the discussion if you would provide it. If you are assuming they are unreliable just because they labor under BushCo, that's an unfair characterization. I know many careerists in Justice who were hired under Clinton, Bush One and even Reagan and Carter who aren't crazyass bastards. The careerists see the big picture and don't get swayed by political intrigue.

[hunter]

241. Yes. Andrew Oosterbaan, a John Ashcroft appointee, is not credible.

I do not respect him. The investigation his office put in front of the Grand Jury is therefore suspect, and yes, that is my opinion, and it's a strong one.

In your opinion a few images upon a computer screen, as horrific as they might be, are enough evidence to destroy a man's reputation and career before the case is tried.

I disagree vehemently with your opinion. I oppose the actions of public officials such as Andrew Oosterbaan who are known to engage in acts of political intimidation and publicity driven witch hunts.

Our justice department is not just, and it is my great hope that a Democratic Administration will clean house of these freaks in 2009.

And yes, as a matter of fact, I really don't get it.

The "Star Wars" kid whose movie flooded the internet was a victim, but people were not prosecuted simply for downloading that video and its many remixes.

In the matter of child abuse, I think there are different gradations of harm done by redistribution of the images. Some deeply closeted guy who doesn't know the victims is doing a lot less harm than someone who is actually involved in victimization of children. I suspect if the penalties for simply viewing the stuff were not so extreme, investigators would have a much easier time identifying the perpetrators of this abuse, and an easier time shutting down the channels by which it comes into the United States from places where U.S. investigators are excluded.

Personally, I don't worry much about pictures or words if the viewer of these words and pictures is not harming other people. Even if the person does harm others, then the harm is in the action of the person, and not implicit to the words or images. I can tell you to go throw your television set through the window, but I don't believe you are going to do that.

I know for a fact that there are pictures of me nude floating about the internet. There's nothing overtly sexual about them (one can hope!) but there is at least one picture of me wearing only a hat and standing on the shores of Mono Lake. I was young and buff, and it wouldn't surprise me if a few creepy old closet cases were drooling over them whenever their frustrated wives weren't looking, but I'm not "revictimized" every time that happens, even though the photos were posted in various places without my permission.

If I ever ran for political office (which is not likely to happen) and some political opponent posted these photos against me, I'd have to say, "Yeah, that's me," and I still wouldn't be victimized.

That's not at all the same level as child porn, but activities carried out in deepest secrecy by self loathing perverts, activities that do not ever extend beyond their horrid little closets and into the lives of others, these actions are not "revictimizations" because all the actions are confined within the secrecy of one person.

In a similar way some unpleasant man might look upon a woman on the street and fantasize about raping her, but so long as these thoughts remain within his own person, there's no cause to arrest him. It does make him a person to be wary of, especially if he has a collection of rape fantasies he's written, and rape fantasy videos he's bought, but it doesn't make him a rapist. He is a fantasy rapist, and if we choose to make that a crime, the penalty in order to be just must be substantially less than the penalties imposed upon an actual rapist.

A person who looks at images of children being sexually abused is not the same as a person who sexually abuses children. The criminal and social penalties for looking at pictures of child sexual abuse, for being a fantasy child sexual abuser, must be substantially less than the criminal and social penalties for being an actual child sex abuser.

[MADem]

251. He's been in justice for almost two decades. Ashcroft promoted him to his current job, but

you make it seem as though he just came aboard. He's a careerist. A professional. You misrepresented him in your post. That's strike one.

He's been with justice for something like eighteen years, at least. He was hired under Bush One, and had no trouble whatsoever working under the Clinton administration.

No one is saying that the penalties for possessing materials are "the same" as molestation. You might be trying to suggest that to buttress your argument, but the penalties do differ. Strike two.

But that isn't the point. The points are two: the action victimizes innocent children, AND it is a federal crime.

And how you can compare the "Star Wars Kid" (a Canadian, not an American, who successfully settled for a MASSIVE payday against the punks who stole the tape from him, BTW--another 'fact' you misrepresented--Strike three- http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060407.wxstarwars07/BNStory/National/home ) with images of children being sexually abused is simply beyond the pale.

I can't believe you're shopping this shit with a straight face.

A guy looking at women on the street and fantasizing doesn't have a photo or video of her being victimized. Where you get these shitty examples, I've no idea. You're not as swift as I gave you credit for, apparently. That would be strike four, but you only get three.

Who is saying, save you, that Mister Ward's career "must be ruined?" If he puts up a vigorous defense, and can rebut the charges, he'll walk. But he's gonna have to come up with a rough draft of a book, a few interviews with the "To Catch a Predator" team, and maybe a publishing contract. If he's gone over the image 'limit,' he'll probably require a little jury nullification on his side, too. And he's probably going to have to explain where he got the images that he provided in December, as well.

We're done here. I have to say, I find you very unsavory. And that's putting it as kindly as I can manage. I draw the line at anyone who thinks that victimizing children, even by the simple act of passing around images of them being assaulted, is "OK." You have absolutely no empathy for the victims of the images, as though they're supermodels or something--they aren't, though. They're little KIDS.

[humbled_opinion]

257. Oh well the left loses another voice of reason...due to insanity. n/t

[hunter]

264. Apparently we are supposed to base our Federal Laws on raw emotion, not reason.

Usually that is the political strategy of tyrants.

Child pornography is a horrible thing. And apparently a dirty old man viewing child pornography in the secrecy of his closet sends bad vibrations throughout the ether that revictimize the victims.

Now what?

Try as I might I could not evoke an emotional argument from MADem, even though the core foundation of MADem's arguments were entirely based in emotion. And then I'm accused of having no empathy. Go figure.

I may or may not be insane, but there is purpose in my insanity.

My own argument is succinct:

I don't trust the Bush Administration Justice Department.

I'm not going to condemn a man without knowing more about the circumstance.

I believe that the system we've arrived at with regard to child pornography is unjust, and the process easily abused.

I will never be patient with loaded prose dripping with right wing code-word bullshit. Once you start claiming that San Francisco liberals are somehow different than other liberals, etc., etc, then that's the path you take. You might as well roll your eyes, quiver your voice, wave your wrist limply, and say, "Well you know how they are."

Yeah, this is a discussion board. I don't give crap about the law, this is not a court. How do people feel?

If someone is trying to manipulate my feelings by evoking mental images of child abuse in whatever w crap they are trying to peddle, especially when their own reasonable argument is faltering, I will call them on it.

Skillful manipulators, especially those who show up in courtrooms and sway jurors to make stupid decisions that are generally harmful to society and the other victims of similar crimes, well, they piss me off.

I hope this is not too difficult to comprehend, even though it is claimed to be the raving of an insane person.

Furthermore, I think baseball analogies are stupid, even as I occasionally use them myself.

:hi:

[humbled_opinion]

277. I totally understand where you are coming from

Logical perspective, yes the emotion the viseral reaction to anyone that would harm a child in such a way is a physical feeling spurred by the emotions. I agree with you that some humans have horrid thoughts but most contain those thoughts due to the rule of law.

So in this case I will wait until all the facts are in before rendering a verdict.

[hunter]

280. Thanks. An entirely misplaced rant...

:blush:

[NashVegas]

228. That's Not Good At All

He seems to be saying that his actions were trying to prove the point of how easy it is to get and spread the stuff online.

If that's true, there will be a chat transcript to match. If he was doing this for a book, he would have / should have kept the transcript.

[MADem]

234. It gets worse.

Per the indictment, he DISTRIBUTED BEFORE he RECEIVED. He was distributing in Dec and Jan, and receiving in Jan:

http://abclocal.go.com/three/kgo/bernie_ward_indictment.pdf

(Adobe .pdf document)

Where, then, did he get the images he was distributing, if not from the internet?

[High Plains]

296. Hmm, that indictment is pretty thin.

Don't federal indictments usually list some facts? This just looks like bald assertions: "Ward did so and so on such and such date."

Honestly, I don't read a lot of federal indictments, so I don't know.

[pegleg]

208. Of all the people whom you would expect - Michael Savage is

defending him on his show. He saysthat he dislikes the man's politics but thinks he was set up.

[nachoproblem]

282. Oh boy, that's the kiss of death.

Even if he was innocent, stick a fork in him.

Defense from Michael Wiener is not something I would want. :tinfoilhat:

[Mizmoon]

3. "just accessing a few images", ey?

That's "looking at child porn" in my book.

This is sickening to anyone, but as a Catholic it makes me particularly sick that yet another person associated with our religion is alleged to be involved with one of the worst crimes there is. For shame.

[Horse with no Name]

8. self delete

[still_one]

20. Sounds like you have already convicted him. I guess you also believe

that Iraq has WMDs, Kerry was a coward, Obama is a Muslim and is unpatriotic because the media said so

[Mizmoon]

29. The word "alleged" is in my post

for a reason.

[still_one]

31. sorry, didn't mean to jump /nt

[Mizmoon]

44. wow. Thanks :)

Apologies don't come often on the web. I appreciate it. Thank you.

[LLee]

91. what if it was for research

I have listened to Bernie for 10 years and yes he has mentioned a book once or twice. No way can I see him looking at child porn for pleasure and this happened back in 2004 for research as Bernie stated.
And shame on Mike Malloy for making the assertion that Bernie was a priest... and therefore...
Bernie is married to a physician, with 5 kids - some come on his show, some in college.... all good kids that love him dearly. If he is into child porn, no way could he have this close knit loving family with a hobby of porn on the side.

[Mizmoon]

115. I dunno

I really don't know him at all - you have far more knowledge of him than I do. We'll see how this plays out in the legal system, I guess. That's what it's there for.

[LLee]

92. Shame to those of you that doubt

What happened to innocent until proven guilty? The first line of this article from the newspaper link provided clears him of these charges:
"Even though their investigation has not uncovered any hint of involvement in child pornography by Bernie other than the accessing of these few images, they’ve none the less decided to proceed on the argument that he violated the law, whatever his purpose was," said Weinberg.
Bernie is a pillar of his community, well loved by those that know him. Some of you are prematurely labeling this guy a pervert without really giving it any thought.
And Mike Malloy... I am so disappointed with you pointing out Bernie used to be a priest. So the Fcck what?

[Mizmoon]

114. Again, I used the word "alleged" for a reason

it was the Catholic thing that got a knee-jerk out of me. I appreciate your mentioning that it's a shame to bring up that this person was once a priest. It's irrelevant no matter what we're discussing about him - either that he did something wonderful or terrible.

[ProudDad]

134. In case you haven't figured it out yet

"Innocent until proved guilty" is a vanished concept in USAmerika... even on this alleged "progressive" board.

[Drunken Irishman]

138. Uh, innocent until proven guilty only works in the court of law.

Last I checked, DU was not the court of law.

[TheWatcher]

187. Yes I'm sure the good old fashioned Lynch mob would be preferable to you.

[Drunken Irishman]

191. Yeah, that's exactly what I'm saying.

Oh wait, nope...don't remember saying that. You just can't hide behind "He's innocent until proven guilty" bullshit, because, well, it doesn't work here. What is said here at DU is not going to impact whether Ward is or is not found guilty. So no, this isn't a lynch mob. We're not storming his house, pulling him out and hanging him.

[LLee]

95. The article clearly states

investigation has not uncovered any hint of involvement in child porn

[Mizmoon]

113. His lawyer clearly stated that

but that's what lawyers get paid for.

[izquierdista]

108. Worst crimes there is?

Really now? Should it be a capital crime then? One glimpse at a 17 year old's boobs and off with your head?

It's amazing the number of otherwise rational thinking people on this board that turn freeper when the phrase "child porn" is mentioned. Ready to dispense with the rights of the accused and mete out the severest of punishments.

Hasn't it occurred to you that "found child porn on his computer" is the modern day equivalent of "his grandparents were Jewish"?

[Mizmoon]

112. As the mother of a 17-year-old

I'd thank you to keep yer eyes off her boobs, thank you very much.

But of course that's not what I meant - I meant actually child porn, like little kids. And yes, maybe I was being dramatic but I do think we could agree that viewing actual child porn that features little children is at least in the top five most heinous crimes. My list would go something like: murder, rape, serious physical assault, producing child porn, viewing child porn. I'd certainly put viewing child porn above property crimes like robbery. I'd get over being robbed, but a child is wounded every time some pig gets off on the image of them being abused imo.

I think your Jewish analogy is absurd.

[izquierdista]

124. All in the definition

Those accused of viewing a 17-year-old's boobs are lumped in the same as what you call little kid porn. Just as it didn't matter if your maternal grandfather was a lapsed Jew who never got his bar mitzvah, if someone wanted you disappeared, you got lumped in with the Jews sent off to Auschwitz.

Perhaps we should look at your family album to see if there is any kiddie porn there. Any pictures of the daughter when she was 2 and taking a bath? People have been arrested for those kind of photos, you know.

[LanternWaste]

157. However, childhood pictures, all other things being equal)...

"Perhaps we should look at your family album..."

However, childhood pictures (all other things being equal) don't fit within the legal definition of child pornography....

[izquierdista]

164. Tell that to the photo clerk at the WalMart

Maybe you can convince the local DA to drop the charges.

[Mizmoon]

177. You are being highly disingenuous eom

[Mizmoon]

163. I'm rolling my eyes eom

[cannabis_flower]

127. The laws are very inconsistant ....

from state to state and from state to federal. For instance, the age of consent in Texas is 17, in Mississippi it's 16, in California it's 18.

The federal law says that it's child porn is if the victim is under 18. So if you lived in any number of states it would be legal for you to have actual physical sex with someone 16 or 17, yet if you took a picture of them you are breaking federal law.

Of course, if you are a 42 year old, you probably don't have any business having sex with a 16 year old (even if it isn't illegal) but if you are 19 or 20 and you have sex with your 16 or 17 year old boyfriend/girlfriend and videotape it you could be in serious trouble if anyone found out.

[MADem]

141. WHAT??????? Do you have any clue how offensive that 'off the cuff' remark is?

It most certainly has NOT 'occurred to me' that the two are equivalent.

Where the hell do you get off making an asserion like that? You oughta be ashamed of yourself.

This is the most idiotic and offensive remark I've seen here this week--bar none:


Hasn't it occurred to you that "found child porn on his computer" is the modern day equivalent of "his grandparents were Jewish"?

[izquierdista]

145. Keep saying that until they come for you

How many careers have been cut short because they "found pornography on his computer"? If they anticipate that it might be a difficult person to bring down, someone who needs a particularly hard hit, it's child porn that they find. Just like birth records might turn up a Jewish sounding name, much can be made of just what kind of pictures turn up in the cache. When you have out of control law "enforcement", they will force the circumstances to fit the accusation. After all, they have the upper hand when it comes to a plea bargain: "would you like to plead guilty, or will you be content to stay with these nice cell-mates who have taken an interest in your case?"

Me? If I was looking at your family album and saw great-grandfather Chaim and on the next page the picture of the 3 year-old twins at bath time, I would probably smile and say that you have a nice family. There are others in this world who would not let you off so innocently for who you are or what you did.

[MADem]

149. Your halfassed statement didn't say "IN GERMANY" -- the way you

worded your stupid post, it appeared as though you were saying that there's no substantial difference between having Jewish heritage and downloading porn. Go back and read what you wrote, without your own assumptions in your head. If you have time, you oughta edit it--for CLARITY.

In America, we aren't in the habit of rounding people up for being Jewish, unless it's at a Miami condo and the bus to temple is about to leave.

[izquierdista]

152. Mea Culpa

If I didn't distinguish one fascist regime from another. You see, I live only a short distance from Oswiecim (Auschwitz in German). They actually did round people up here, and they weren't the ones who had pictures of the kids swimming at the lake.

[NashVegas]

229. I Thought It Was Very Clear

"modern day equivalent."

[MADem]

236. Well, go back and read it again. It wasn't clear.

And I explained, plainly, why it wasn't. And the OP took my point.

The assertion of Jewish heritage being equivalent wasn't put in any context. Absent context, one might have said it's the modern day equivalent of being Asian, or having brown eyes.

Your opinion is noted, and disregarded.

[NashVegas]

238. A Suggestion

Back away from the keyboard. Take a walk. Pet your dog. Feed the guppies.

Y'know?

[MADem]

239. Take your own advice. NT

[nachoproblem]

283. It was clear.

But it still wasn't a very good analogy.

Yes, there is a conveniently available term of slander in both contexts. But do you think it's worth noting that in our context the available term is for a *voluntary action*? Which fascist dictatorship? Um, I'll take the one without the actual ovens, please.

Jeepers.

[LanternWaste]

158. I'm sure that though has occurred to many people

I'm sure that though has occurred to many people. And quickly dismissed as simply as justification...



"Ready to dispense with the rights of the accused and mete out the severest of punishments."

No one on this board can mete out punishment, so our options are legally moot. Our opinions do not help nor hinder a defender, a prosecutor, a judge, nor a jury.

Over dramatize much?

[ProudDad]

133. Get a fucking grip

the "worst crime there is" is waging war on innocents for economic advantage...a capitalist mainstay.

If you want to get your panties in a twist -- do it there!

[Mizmoon]

178. oh please - so you dislike capitalism, do you?

This kind of foolishness is why I don't post here much.

[TheWatcher]

188. Jesus, so he is a raging Communist because he made that statement?

"This kind of foolishness is why I don't post here much."

We should be so lucky :eyes:

[clixtox]

197. It must be tough...

Getting on and off such a high horse!

Your observations are not adding anything but prejudice and ignorance to the discussion.

As an admitted Catholic religionist your opinions about Mr. Ward have to viewed as those of a person consumed by mindless superstition.

Nothing more or less!

[musette_sf]

4. setup

it's got everything the Freepers want:

* progressive
* based in San Francisco
* leftie talker who has appeared on Fux Spews to disagree with their vultures
* outspoken against Xian fundie scum
* outspokenly spiritual, NOT religious

[cali]

7. oh please.

you provide nothing but the same argument that freepers present when one of theirs is busted for this shit. And this is in SF, not MS or NE. I'm not gonna say he's guilty, but it's absurd to claim he was targeted because he's a progressive.

[musette_sf]

i live out here and am familiar with Mr. Ward,

his programming, and have listened to his shows.

he is known nationally as a progressive talker.

he has appeared on national broadcasts, including Fux Spews.

he would be a juicy target for a setup.

i would suggest that we find out more facts before we claim he was NOT targeted because he is a progressive.

[Stewie]

15. Of course

i would suggest that we find out more facts before we claim he was NOT targeted because he is a progressive.

The old "I'm going to ignore the obvious reality of the situation and ask you to prove a negative, lest reality blows apart my conspiracy theory."

[musette_sf]

24. what "obvious reality"?

all we know is what is in the news articles. the rest is conjecture. your conjecture, and my conjecture.

and there is scant info in the news articles. you talk like he's Swirly Face Paedo Guy who was caught in the act in a photo, when the facts we know about Mr. Ward's situation are very few. the number of photos alleged are few, the incident ocurred years ago, and as Mr. Ward has been a tireless fighter AGAINST paedo guys, his defense of research could actually be plausible.

when you find out some more "obvious reality", let us know.

[still_one]

18. Remember Vince Foster who was killed by Bill Clinton?

Remember the outing of Plane?
Remember the swift boating of Kerry?
Remember how Iraq had WMDs, and anyone who critisized it was labelled as a "traitor"

Obama is a Muslim
etc. etc. etc.

[pipoman]

214. uh, his lawyer is affirming that he did access and send

child porn. No set up there or why would he and his lawyer be confessing?

Indicted by a SF Grand Jury, that is SF residents who are brought from the registered voters in the area who said, "Yes, we believe that you prosecutors have enough evidence to bring Mr. Ward up on charges and these are the charges...". Explain how that could be set up?

I am certainly not defending or convicting the man but to look at this and come up with "set up" requires :tinfoilhat:.

[still_one]

13. It is just like joe mccarthy. No real proof, just an accusation

“Even though their investigation has not uncovered any hint of involvement in child pornography by Bernie other than the accessing of these few images, they’ve none the less decided to proceed on the argument that he violated the law, whatever his purpose was,” said Weinberg.

Have you ever heard his show? If you have you would understand why some people are very skeptical of the charges

Let's face it there are 25% of Americans who believe that Obama is a Muslim, and that should tell you a lot about what we are up against

You have a good percentage of people who believe the swift boat crap they did against Kerry

and you STILL have a good number of people who believe that Iraq was an immenient threat to the U.S. and had WMDs

[MADem]

143. I was shocked to learn that the Frugal Gourmet was a pervert

I mean, really...who knew?

http://www.current.org/people/peop813s.html



Four days before he was to face trial in Tacoma, Wash., Jeff Smith, host of the popular PBS cooking show, agreed July 1 <1998> to pay an undisclosed sum to seven young men who had accused him variously of groping, kissing and raping them when they were teenagers.

"Based on my interviews with a lot of the principals involved, I think it would have been pretty ugly," says Deborah Holton, a Portland Oregonian reporter who has followed the story closely. Court TV had asked to cover the trial, and it could have featured testimony against Smith from more than a dozen people who didn't sue him, as well as the seven who did. The plaintiffs' lawyer was also attempting to force testimony by Smith's wife and partner Patti, who has lived apart from him for years; Judge Fred Fleming had told her to testify, though Smith was appealing that ruling.

[progressivebydesign]

175. Gee... that was so entirely NOT subtle. n/t

[MADem]

195. No, it wasn't subtle, and wasn't INTENDED to be.

WTF was THAT comment about? How 'dare' I say this kind of shit happens??

For those who are saying "Oh NO...it COULDN'T be!!! It's completely impossible!!!!" I provide an example to show that YES, it IS possible. Absolutely possible.

And sometimes, molesters ARE people that we don't expect would ever be changed with such offenses. Like the pious reverend, the PBS maven with the popular cooking show, that Frugal Gourmet.

And I WAS surprised to learn of his charges.

It happens.

[Faygo Kid]

5. "Ward, a self described progressive and former Catholic priest . . ."

The progressive part is really disturbing. Faux News will be all over this.

The Catholic priest part is not surprising. What is with that?

[Webster Green]

6. Damn, that's fucked up!

I wonder if he's being set up by the fascists at BushCo Inc.

The fact that he's an ex-priest is pretty damaging though. That won't look good in court.

[kineneb]

9. sounds like a setup

I have been listening to him for years. He abhors abuse of anyone, especially children. The ads for his program call him "The Lion of the Left"; he is a true liberal, one of the few on AM radio.

I wonder who he pissed off.

[still_one]

10. I don't believe it. He has been one of the strongest advocates against bush

This is a setup

The bush crime family going after their enemies

No way

If anyone has heard his show, you would understand why they are going after him

[LLee]

94. investigation has not uncovered any hint of involvement in child porn

from the newpaper article link:
"Even though their investigation has not uncovered any hint of involvement in child pornography by Bernie other than the accessing of these few images, they’ve none the less decided to proceed on the argument that he violated the law, whatever his purpose was," said Weinberg.

I believe this story but fear most are making it out to be something it is not.

[Codeine]

162. Not quite what it says. . .

No hint of child porn other than the child porn on his computer, you mean.

[lunarose]

11. justice dept corruption

Bernie Ward is a popular host and reporter here in the Bay Area. i have listened to him for over ten years. He has been reporting on child abuse by teachers and priests for most all of that time, and was responsible for breaking some big stories on that subject, so i was not surprised when i heard the charge. Anyone who had listened to his reporting would expect that he would've run across some of that crap in the course of the phenomenal reporting he did. If you look at the charges, he is accused of looking at a few images 4 years ago, he admitted he made a mistake, and the authorities sat on it until now.

He has been ripping the current administration a new one every time he goes on the air for years now. Do any of you remember the whole scandal about the Justice Dept. purge of attorneys who didn't toe the admin line and prosecute their 'enemies'? Was that ever investigated or was anyone prosecuted or even reprimanded? Why would we expect a different atmosphere in the Justice Dept now? Have you ever heard the words 'McCarthy' or 'Cointelpro'?

I have no access to the ultimate truth in this matter, but the circumstances stink to high heaven. Dig a little deeper before you decid you know the truth.

[musette_sf]

12. welcome

and agreed.

[mitchtv]

140. welcome to DU

I smell a rat

[Stump]

14. I'll reserve judgement...

until after the trial...but I'm not buying a setup. But I'm also not buying "research" on child porn. Anyone who even looks at that shit is sick.

[hayu_lol]

17. Longtime listener to KGO/Bernie and Ray's shows...

He has been extremely rough on the Repugs for years.

One note, until some real facts surface: This is from 4 years ago while researching a book. That was during the time period when some of the most prominent fundies were also 'researching' the same topic. They had committees studying porn of all kinds so that they could write laws to prohibit the public from viewing stuff.

Shock. Only word that comes to mind.

Wait for facts. One is that the govt. waited 4 years? They have been slamming everyone else immediately.

[Stump]

21. I wonder...

If the images from 4 years ago are all the feds got? Or have they been making a case for years. It'll be interesting when the details emerge.

[musette_sf]

30. if you read the article

you would know that the images from 4 years ago ARE all they've got.

[MADem]

150. No, that isn't all they've got. He both downloaded AND distributed in a chat room.

Per this article: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/12/07/MNFHTPMQD.DTL

[musette_sf]

27. and you know it WASN'T a setup

how?

[Stewie]

35. How do you know the Queen isn't a shape-shifting reptilian?

How do you know the Titanic wasn't sunk by a hidden bomb?

How do you know we're not really ruled by the Bilderburgs and "Congress" is just 535 CIA agents all in on the conspiracy?

You can justify any mentally ill conspiracy by asking people to prove a silly negative.

The level of just sheer insanity on this board is getting maddening.

Counting down the seconds until someone responds with an instance of government doing wrong, which AUTOMATICALLY proves ALL conspiracies.

[musette_sf]

38. and you have Molly Ivins as your avatar?

wow. just wow.

[still_one]

45. Do you remember the McMartin child molestation case?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McMartin_preschool

[Stewie]

47. Yep, the old "I found one case" which proves ALL cases

Apples and oranges. Those were children compelled to testify. No children testifying here. And one case of an overzealous local prosecutor does not prove a massive White House conspiracy, unless you have issues.

Again, if you think some overnight radio host that few people have ever heard of is the victim of a set-up by the President of the United States, you need thorazine. Who's next? Biff and The Gator over at the Morning Zoo?

If it's all a conspiracy, why not set up Harry Reid, or Barack Obama? Why some guy that no one's ever heard of, and even Fox News feel threatened enough by to put him on? But I'm sure there's a conspiracy theory as to that, too.

I'm sick and F-----G tired of whackos on this board. You do realize Republicans cut and paste these threads and send them out to make the Democratic Party look bad?

[musette_sf]

52. funny you should mention oranges!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=3092564&mesg_id=3092733

and i assume that since you are so sick and tired of us, you are going away now, back to where it is you normally abide...

bye now! :hi:

[still_one]

63. I understand your point, and the best example of tin hat conspiricy is the 9/11

crap, where they said the building didn't collapse because of the airplane fuel, etc.

You might be absolutely right, but it is not that far fetched to assume that an extremely harsh critic of this administration, who has been on national programs from CNN to CNBC go possibly be a target. I wouldn't put this by Lee Atwater's boy Karl Rove, or someone like him.

People can speculate anyway they want, and until more facts are known, that is all it is. We are all entitled to what we perceive, and in the course of time we shall see what develops

Incidently, they did setup Barack Obama. They keep referring to his Muslim background, even repeating the lie that he is still a Muslim, and went to a Muslim school when he was younger

[Stump]

104. I don't know...

But I'll bet my ass more facts surface than that short article contains. But then again, maybe you're right. Who knows?

[verges]

61. Including investigators? Courts?

Including investigators? Courts?

[nachoproblem]

284. I've clicked on a few images I deeply regretted

None of them were children and I didn't save them, but still... shit happens.

[villager]

16. From the SF Chronicle's longer afternoon article:

<snip>

"More than three years ago, Bernie was doing research for a book he
was doing on hypocrisy in America," Weinberg said.

As part of the research, Ward downloaded "a few images" of child
pornography, and, Weinberg said, "it came to the attention of the
government in late 2004."

"They investigated and they never found any involvement in child
pornography other than this period that he accessed these images,"
Weinberg said. "The government knows that Bernie was doing this for an
investigation he was doing for a book. But the government believes he
violated the letter of the law and they have gone ahead and prosecuted
him."

Weinberg stressed that "the fact that these events happened three
years ago and they are just being prosecuted shows the fact that nobody
believes that he is a child predator."

"He is just being prosecuted for a mistake he made (more than) three
years ago," the lawyer said.

Federal authorities seized Ward's computer in early 2005 and there
was no evidence of child pornography or any other impropriety, Weinberg added.

"We have been trying to convince the government that his is not
something they should proceed with. They said, 'He violated the law, sorry.' "

<snip>

www.sfgate.com

[still_one]

19. From now on when Ward's name is mentioned, they will associate it with child porn

We should be very afraid if the republicans win in 2008

[hayu_lol]

22. They will probably go after Ray Taliaferro next...

Might want to check out KGO:

http://www.kgo.com

There might be a comment there.

Hmmm, apropos of nothing at all, seems like Bush/Cheney have been breaking the LETTER of the law for years now.

[still_one]

26. looks like they already took him off the programming agenda

I am quite sure ABC is not too unhappy to have him removed either

If the charges turn out to be false, like the crap they pulled on Richard Jewel, I hope he is able to sue the crap out of them

[MADem]

147. Here's the BIGGER question--Did he write 'the book' and is there any mention of child porn in it?

I go to Amazon, I punch in "Bernie Ward" and I get, er...pretty much shit. A book about Nostadamus, another about ANGELS, a book about CATS, a book about Home Remedies...a book about a SERIAL Killer (published in 1995)....

Did they find any rough drafts on that hard drive?

He was indicted by a Grand Jury, too. This isn't JUST the government making charges--people heard the details, and decided to go ahead and charge the guy--and there are aspects of his conduct that DO, like it or not, raise hackles:

But on Thursday, Ward was indicted by a grand jury on two federal counts of Internet child pornography - allegations that he possessed and distributed images using his computer. .... Authorities in the case noted that Ward was monitored as he went on a chat room and sent and received images, sources familiar with the case said. Weinberg did not comment on the details of those accusations, other than to confirm that his client is accused of distribution of images.

And the station is a little worried, too, plainly:

"We were just recently made aware of these serious charges and are surprised and concerned by their nature," read the statement, in which the station said it would have no further comment. Ward's last show was Tuesday night; a substitute will take over his 10 p.m.-to-1 a.m. slot until further notice, the station said.

[11cents]

23. Dudes. He's not important enough to be set up for political reasons.

The Bush regime reaped real gains from targeting Democratic politicians. The control of Congress or statehouses could be at stake. Bernie Ward is a talkshow host. He's not even nationally syndicated, and he mostly communicates with other Bay Area liberals. I enjoy his show from time to time, but it's sheer self-deception to imagine that he's influential enough to be any kind of threat to the GOP.

Now, it could be that his lawyers explanation is true and he's the victim of over-reaching prosecutors who love racking up cases like this. That would be an injustice, but not a political hit job.

[musette_sf]

25. and i say you're wrong

i think the BFEE has been searching for years (about 7 of them, to be exact) to find ANYTHING on ANY leftie talker. i think this is the "best" they could find on anyone.

Mr. Ward appears on national radio and TV broadcasts with regularity, so the local angle of your theory doesn't really fly. he posits on Fux Spews upon occasion, if that's national enough for you.

if you think the BFEE ISN'T after leftie talkers, then consider: WHO beat Randi Rhodes up? the "pie-eyed drunk" story was an obvious lie and smear, and (i suppose for her safety) Randi's not talking. when you get sued by CACI and win against that scum, they aren't done with you yet.

[Stewie]

32. Jesus Christ

If some local radio host that few people ever heard of was the target of an elaborate, seven-year-long conspiracy by the President of the United States intended to silence him, wouldn't they just tell Fox not to put him on the air, and get his station to fire him?

And if he was SOOOO powerful and convincing, do you think Fox would have him on? They probably just went out and found the creepiest nut they could.

Really. Local nighttime talk show host, whom most people have never heard of, is the victim of a massive conspiracy ordered by the President of the United States.

I swear to God this board gets downright embarassing sometimes. You do realize Republicans LOOOOVE to take thread like this and broadcast them to make Democrats look like lunatics?

Now I'm just counting down the seconds until some other lunatic responds with "You can't rule anything out" before launching into his own Bush version of the insane Clinton Body Count.

Attenion lurking Republicans. We're not all drooling pyschopaths who think static during Randi Rhodes broadcasts is caused by RNC space satellites.

[musette_sf]

34. what is downright embarrassing

is the post i am replying to.

a DUer posted this very excellent link the other day, which i bookmarked.

http://www.orange-papers.org/orange-propaganda.html

guess how many "techniques" i find in the post i am replying to?

[Stewie]

36. So HE's in on the conspiracy too?

Guess how many techniques I'm finding in your post. Confront conspiracy nut with reality of the situation. Conspiracy nut claims more conspiracies. Ignores reality. Links to a website. Extra credit if it's about Nazis.

[musette_sf]

39. and you have Molly Ivins as your avatar?

wow. just wow.

[still_one]

42. Gee, remember how Richard Jewel was accussed, or Scott Ritter

or John Kerry, or Joe Wilson, or Plane, or Bill Clinton for killing vince foster, or Obama for being a Muslim and unAmerican for not wearing a flag lapal

These are people who go by a sorch and burn policy. Remember the Southern strategy?

No one crosses this administration. John McCain was outed in 2000 in South Carolina by a rumor that her fathered a child of color out of marriage. Just change the facts slightly, and it is OK

I am not saying ward is or isn't, but I am saying he does have enemies

[grasswire]

180. You forgot James Hatfield.

Not only accused, but suicided, too.

[MADem]

220. Your second guy there was convicted.

Not such a swift example to use. His record was sealed, and the (Democratic) prosecutor was fired for giving him preferential treatment.

And McCain was not "outed by a rumor that he fathered a child." He adopted a child, and Karl Rove had his minions lie about it.

But that didn't happen in a court of law, like this business did. This case went to a grand jury, and it is the grand jury that indicted.

[TrogL]

74. You do realize this website is primarily anti-AA prograganda, right?

Talk about irony.

[musette_sf]

78. there is a good deal of anti-AA info on it

used to illustrate the propaganda techniques. so?

personally, i know some people who were helped immensely by AA. i also know some people whose opinions are more like those expressed at the link.

again... so?

[TrogL]

96. His examples don't demonstrate the logical fallacy he's talking about

They're just another excuse to bash AA, usually using a different logical fallacy. Ad hominem seems to be one of his favourites.

[verges]

70. Just suppose...

First of all, San Francisco is a MAJOR market. I'm sure many, many folks are familiar with him (I am not, I live on the east of the Miss.)

I don't really have an opinion if there was a conspiracy or not. But, If there is an organized fascist shift going on (as has been posited here,) doesn't it seem reasonable to suppose that the bad guys put together a list of a few hundred leftie talker's to get? Doesn't it also seem reasonable to suppose that, if such a list existed, a major market leftie in a very leftie town would be on that list with several asterisks?

Now, presumably, this stuff was looked at three years ago, and let go, because it amounts to nothing. Some hot shot comes along and finds it three years later, and sees an opportunity to "take one out."

I don't know. But, if you subscribe to some of the worst Bush theories, maybe it's not such a stretch.

[hayu_lol]

72. Don't know where you live...

but KGO San Francisco is heard live from down in Mexico to Point Barrow at night. He is heard in Idaho, Nev, Ariz.and so on. The show is heard on the net worldwide.

There are literally millions of listeners. If you never heard him, you've missed something. That is your loss.

Was sorry to hear he has been pulled...but I can imagine the calls he would get tonight. They will probably call in anyway.

Have to wait on the facts on this one to surface.

[11cents]

33. Nobody beat Randi Rhodes up.

She said herself that it was an accident, misreported by some fool on AAR as an attack. The fact that she didn't later say it wasn't an accident doesn't mean she's "not talking."

The only left-wing talker who could be considered influential was Al Franken, and that's because he was already halfway in the political world while he was on the air. For the rest -- well, I can't talk you out of your illusions, and have no particular desire to. I like Bernie, and I'm not assuming he's guilty, but the notion that the "BFEE" has been searching seven years to find a LIBERAL RADIO HOST to target is ... well ... now they've been targeting politicians, yes, because they are important. But LIBERAL RADIO HOSTS ... well ...

[musette_sf]

37. yeah, she just tripped and fell

and fvcked up her face and teeth really badly, all by herself. uh-huh.

the leftie talkers, aside from Keith O, are our ONLY broadcast media voices. to deny that our media voices, speaking out every day against the BFEE, are targeted by the BFEE... well... either you don't get what the BFEE is really all about, or you're pretending not to get it.

[Garbo 2004]

240. Randi said she was drinking on an empty stomach....didn't say she was mugged, Filed no police rpt.

[BrotherBuzz]

131. Tell the Archdiocese of San Francisco...

he's not important enough to be set up for political reasons.

[CountAllVotes]

136. you got that right

he called them out on O'Shea and that Archbishop Quinn! Good for you Bernie Ward! I have not forgotten what you have done!

:kick:

[CountAllVotes]

28. . . .

I seriously doubt that Bernie Ward did anything wrong! :mad: :argh:
:eyes:



:kick:

[musette_sf]

40. quite a few distractors on this thread

looks like salacious, not-exactly-fresh, possibly baseless, accusations against one of our best progressive voices, are juicy fodder for some.

[Stewie]

51. So the rational people here are ALSO in on the conspiracy?

Come to think of it, how do we know YOU'RE not part of the conspiracy? You might be a RNC employee paid to post on websites to make Democrats look bad.

Don't believe me? I can link to stuff too!!! http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gBgSjgAp90YSBebVLOdVp3xEAYPwD8TBPQDO0 Someone posting online posing as the opposition to make them look bad!!! It proves everything!!!!

You can't win an argument against a conspiracy nut. Anything that proves him wrong is part of the conspiracy too, and the lack of any credible evidence also proves the conspiracy, since the lack of proof proves the coverup. It's circular logic at its worst.

[musette_sf]

53. "You might be a RNC employee"

project much?

[TheWatcher]

168. You can't win against blind ignorance either.

But hey, at least it's great to be a winner, right Stewie?

Now please, go rest your head on a big fat pillow in Pleasantville. I'm trying to listen to the conversation.

[0007]

189. Will you STFU stewey? We've all heard you the first fucking time. Give it a rest.

[Horse with no Name]

98. They are out in droves the past couple of days

:(

[fascisthunter]

41. I'll Be Shocked If This is True

He accessed images.... how? By accident or intent and if so how do they know? I want to know.

[still_one]

43. It won't matter now. I have no doubt he will ever work at KGO again

If he is guilty, than prosecute him, but what if he isn't, what do you suppose will happen to his career?

Remember the McMartin child molestation case. They ruined a whole family because of an over-zealous prosecuter, and a mentally ill parent

Yes, they were innocent, but they were still ruined

[MADem]

153. He was in a chat room, and he provided as well as downloaded.

My guess is that the chat room was a sting operation.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/12/07/MNFHTPMQD.DTL

[Peace Patriot]

46. 1. What were the Bushites doing, snooping around in a leftist reporter's

computer in the first place?

2. Look out! Here it comes! Child porn charges, and whatever else they can throw, at left radio hosts, who have been making inroads into their "Big Lies."

3. When are we gonna learn? Even with this obvious set up, people still jump to the conclusion that our "men in blue" are right and Bernie Ward---BERNIE WARD, people--BERNIE WARD, THE MOST HARD-HITTING LEFTIST COMMENTATOR AND INVESTIGATOR in the Bay area--is a child pornographer!!!!! --because he had a couple of images on his computer from four years ago!!!!

4. Talk radio leftists, and any leftists of renown, purge your computers! I get foul crap spammed at me every day, and I can't keep up with it--even with many filters. They can find anything they want, on anybody. They are spying on EVERYBODY. And they have absolutely no compunction about using these unconstitutional, fascist powers, to destroy people who get in their way. And how they do it is by use of the corporate news monopolies, to spread the smear, so that prosecution and proof are irrelevant, and "innocent until proven guilty" is a joke. It's the smear they want. They don't care about the truth. I saw them do it in California to Kevin Shelley, our former Sec of State, who went after Diebold. We've all seen them do it to Max Cleland, John Kerry, Bill Clinton, John McCain, Scott Ritter, Joe Wilson, Valerie Plame, Richard Clark, and many others. And now they have weapons that would make Hitler envious--to dig out the least weakness or taint in anybody they want to target, to invade privacy, to plant, to make shit up, to make innocent things appear criminal, to smear, to destroy. Wake up!

5. WAKE UP!

You think the Bushites and their Fatherland gestapo care about your children? You think they want to "keep America safe"? You think they have clean, upright, honorable motives in targeting a leftist political commentator who hits them every day with exposes of their lies, their "Alice in Wonderland" hypocrisy, their thievery, their horrible wars, and their many, many other crimes?

6. WAKE THE FUCK UP!

---------------------------

Confession: Okay, even I thought, "Oh, no, not Bernie...he didn't...". Yup, my first, almost pre-conscious thought: If it's the 'news," there must be something to it. If "they" have charged him, there must be something....

And it wasn't until I read the remarks of his attorney--in this forum--seconds later, that my conscious mind kicked in, and the "rat" in these rat bastards' charges began to smell so bad, that I began to respond to it with all my faculties.

It's interesting how this Bushite crap can de-activate your bullshit detector, momentarily, and catch you off guard. This is how they use the war profiteering corporate news monopolies, who oblige them by trumpeting their disinformation far and wide, before the truth can ever catch up with it.

Watch your mind! Learn how it works, in relation to the relentless, 24/7 warmongering and fascist propaganda that it is subjected to. Wake up! Stay alert! Fully wake up! We cannot afford to be lulled. We cannot afford to be asleep any more. We must learn to anticipate their lies, and not let this bullshit disinformation slip into our unconscious minds. It is very difficult, and very important--on so many matters, from the rigged voting machines to Hugo Chavez, from the Iraq War slipping into the corporate news river of forgetfulness, to the muffling of the screams of the tortured. From Donald Rumsfeld being an honored guest on the WaPo editorial page this weekend (where he virtually declares war on Venezuela), to Bush still being "our" spokesman to the world on the "threat" posed by Iran's non-existent nuke program. Who ARE these people? And why are we still subjected to their goddamned lies, over and over and over again? Reject it UPFRONT. Know that they belong in jail. And understand why they are smearing Bernie Ward, and testing systems of pervasive spying and the promulgation of MORE lies, to disable us completely--we, the American people--as a progressive force in the world.

When are we gonna learn?

[musette_sf]

49. an excellent post

i thank you, fellow Bay Arean, for this fine post. let those who would attempt to distract with accusational hyperbole, and a dearth of facts, try and deny the Truth To Power you have written.

(and Kevin Shelley is a heck of a nice guy. i wrote him an impassioned email of support while he was being smeared mercilessly by the Cali MSM, and he wrote me back a very nice email thanking me for my support.)

[Stewie]

54. "accusational hyperbole, and a dearth of facts"

So what exactly would you call claims that the President of the United States is conspiring against a little-known overnight radio host, which no credible evidence whatsoever?

And if anyone is wondering why my dander is so up over this, it's because every time I try to speak to a Republican, they actually cite DemocraticUnderground.com by name to make the claim that anyone with a progressive viewpoint is a mentally ill conspiracy nut.

[musette_sf]

56. you must talk to some

whacked out Republicans.

[verges]

77. Just because...

I used to have a teacher in college who said "Just because you're paranoid; doesn't mean they're not out to get you."

[Occulus]

122. Here's the more timely version:

"Just because you see an enemy behind every Bush, it does not follow that you are wrong"

[fascisthunter]

111. then leave if your image "concerns" you so much

that way you can claim you are not associated with democraticunderground. My BS meter just went off with you.

[hogwyld]

117. Why are you speaking to the enemy?

I avoid 'thugs like the plague that they are...

[Missy Vixen]

118. Why are you here?

I can't think of anything I care about less than what any Republican thinks, frankly. Considering the fact they have a little PR issue of their own with F*ee Republic, they're the last ones who should be throwing rocks.

Julie

[Judi Lynn]

151. Speaking of PR issues, I'm not forgetting Republican Mayor Phil Giordano, who molested two children

in his own office, on the taxpayers' dime!

~snip~
Giordano Receives 37-Year Prison Sentence
Giordano Could Have Faced Life In Prison

POSTED: 10:32 am EDT June 13, 2003
UPDATED: 5:45 pm EDT June 13, 2003


WEST HARTFORD, Conn. -- Philip Giordano, the former Waterbury mayor convicted of violating the civil rights of two girls he sexually abused, has been sentenced Friday morning. PHILIP GIORDANO

Giordano, who pleaded not guilty, was sentenced to 37 years in prison.

Giordano's sister and mother attended the sentencing. His wife was not present.

"This case is the worst I have ever seen," said U.S. District Judge Alan Nevas in passing sentence. "Your conduct is the worst I have ever seen. I've seen drug dealers, murderers. What you did is indescribable." FeedRoom
Ex-Mayor Sentenced For Child Sex

Nevas also noted that Giordano did not speak during the sentencing hearing.

"Most defendants have something to say, if nothing more than to turn and look at your mother and your sister and say, 'I'm sorry.'"

Nevas said Giordano had been "preying on two small, innocent children."

"They knew nothing. You, sir, are a sexual predator."

Giordano also was convicted in March of conspiring with a prostitute, who is the mother of one of the girls and an aunt of the other. Jurors convicted him on 14 of 15 counts of using an interstate device -- a cell phone -- to arrange the meetings with the girls.

Prosecutors said that Giordano used his cellular phone -- an interstate device -- to set up liaisons with the children and a convicted prostitute, Guitana Jones. Jones pleaded guilty to federal charges and testified at Giordano's federal trial.

The girls also testified against the mayor. Prosecutor Peter Jongbloed, who portrayed Giordano as a corrupt liar during his closing arguments, pointed out that Giordano has acknowledged having sex with a prostitute and taking payoffs from contractors.

The FBI was investigating municipal corruption -- a probe it labeled "Operation LandPhil" -- when it stumbled upon phone calls in which Giordano set up meetings with Jones, her daughter and her niece. Neither Giordano nor anyone else has been charged with corruption.

On one of the taped conversations, Giordano talks with Jones while his sons can be heard in the background playing. On another call, Giordano told her, "I want one of the little girls."

On their last recorded conversation, Giordano warns the woman: "If my name gets mentioned, you might as well put a knife through your throat and kill yourself."
(snip/...)

http://www.nbc30.com/news/2268479/detail.html?topstories&id=56414,00.html



Party: REPUBLICAN, what else?

Republican "Paragons of Virtue"
in High National Offices (Section I ):

http://www.liberalslikechrist.org/about/gopimmorality.html

[TheWatcher]

169. I imagine Republicans are who you mostly talk to anyway.

Sorry, Stewie, we've seen this kind of material before.

Thank You for your "concern", however.

[laststeamtrain]

62. Right on! (& thank you). n/t

[hunter]

81. That's what I want to know, what was Big Brother looking for?

It's the creepiest thing about this story.

If I posted some child porn here it would end up in the cache of everyone who read this post.

Or I could just post something like this:



:puke:

[MADem]

154. The facts don't look too good--the feds didn't seek HIM out, he sought out a chat room

and he is charged with DISTRIBUTING as well as receiving.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/12/07/MNFHTPMQD.DTL

He'd better come up with a book, or at least a rough draft and some notes....

[hunter]

171. I'm certain that's how you get in the front door.

Sorta like joining a gang. You got to do something bad before they accept you as one of their own.

But I don't see anything yet that goes beyond Ward's naivete as an internet investigator.

If you want to see what's up in those filthy cesspools of the internet, it's best to interview someone who has already been caught, and not venture into places that are still active.

But for now the sorry mess is still sealed up. We don't really know what happened and I don't trust most of the people who want to police the internet. The same tools they use to go after child pornography can easily be redirected against political dissidents.

I'm still going to give Ward his innocent until proven guilty. It will be interesting to see if he uses any of this experience to go after the political mechanisms that reeled him in.

[MADem]

198. Well, neither one of us was empaneled on that SF grand jury.

However, a passle of folks found reason to indict him. That's not a conviction, certainly, but it is a Judy Tenuda "It COULDA happened."

I'm not going to convict him either, all I'm going to say is, where there is smoke, there may be fire--or there may not. This isn't "JUST" the 'mean old Bushies' like some are trying to claim, who are 'beating up on Bernie'--this is a SAN FRANCISCO Grand Jury who couldn't bring themselves to nullify his behavior (downloading AND providing images to others) or buy his excuse for it.

[hunter]

204. Oh, a San Francisco Grand Jury! I get it...

:eyes:

[MADem]

221. I don't think you do, actually.

These are ordinary citizens who are empaneled. They look at all the evidence, and they make the decision to let the guy walk or push the case forward.

There apparently was enough "there" there to push the case forward.

You might not like that, but it's his peers--not evil, skulking Republicans-- who were looking at the evidence, and making the call.

I still haven't heard a soul explain how "BushCo," in crafting this clever "set up," managed to force this gentleman to sit at his computer, enter a "chat room," download images, and then PROVIDE IMAGES to at least one other individual.

I also think it is a stretch to say that "book research" necessarily includes PROVIDING images--and that's one of the charges, here. Of course, that will all be decided at trial....but he does need a good lawyer. IMO.

[hunter]

226. See my post #225 above.

It may explain my opinion of "ordinary citizens."

I don't believe I've ventured into conspiracy-land in my posts here, and it seems to me you've now introduced a logical inconsistency into your own argument. Your exceptionally "liberal" San Francisco jury has morphed into ordinary citizens.

[MADem]

231. No--they ARE ordinary citizens. Ordinary SF citizens.

An ordinary citizen in Washington DC is a black man or woman, an ordinary citizen in Bangor ME is likely to be a caucasian of French or Irish extraction. An ordinary citizen in Tokyo is Japanese, an ordianry citizen in Rome is a Roman Catholic, an ordinary citizen in Esfahan, Iran is a shi'a muslim.

Where you stand depends on where you sit, or live. And SF is a liberal town, by and large. And the ordinary resident would be inclined towards a liberal view.

Not inconsistent, if you follow the theme, and avoid the inclination to cherrypick.

Mr. Ward has problems. He was accused of PROVIDING images on a date that happened a week or three before he RECEIVED images.

Where did he get the images he provided, I wonder?

He NEEDS a good lawyer.

[hunter]

235. Probably from one of his old Catholic Priest buddies...

Tell you what, you can join our gang if you go steal me a bottle of Tequila from that liquor store over there. And not the cheap stuff either.

After that I've got this removable hard drive full of kiddie porn I want you to hide in the trunk of Chief Justice John Roberts' car. Here's the key...

:eyes:

I think you are being obtuse and using the word "liberal" as a slur. Any ordinary group of U.S. citizens, anywhere in the nation, when presented with evidence that a well known radio talk show host had sent and received images of child sexual abuse, would sign off on the indictment.

Like most people in the United States, you seem to have a preoccupation with race and national origin, and I find it intriguing that you used the example of a black man in Washington D.C. within the very first line of your response to me, especially as the thread relates to pedophilia.

I stand by my assertion that the ordinary inhabitants of almost any large cosmopolitan U.S. city tend to be liberal, and that San Francisco is little different.

Like other U.S. cities, San Francisco also has a large population of recent immigrants who tend to be socially conservative within their own communities, but are generally accepting of the city's reputation for tolerance and support of the gay, lesbian, and transgender communities, or the exuberant displays of leftist political communities.

I don't believe the residence of the Grand Jury has any bearing at all on the validity of the charges.

[MADem]

237. Stealing a bottle of tequila does not involve the molestation of a kid.

I am not using the word liberal as a slur, either. I find the liberals of SF charming. I used to live in Monterey during the Leon Panetta era, and enjoyed getting into SF at every opportunity. Where you get that assertion, I have NO idea. The people of SF are NOT from Kansas, though--that's plain.

Children aren't booze bottles. They're people. Who don't deserve to be victimized once, never mind repeatedly.

This discussion started out BEFORE the indictment was made available. All we knew, initially, was what was in the SFGATE newspaper articles, which was that Mister Ward downloaded AND uploaded, without giving the ORDER in which these events occurred.

I used a black man in DC because I used to live there. I used a Shia in Esfahan because I used to live there. I used an Asian in Tokyo because I used to live in Japan (but not in Tokyo, in a city most Americans have never heard of). So, cut the shit. Run out of arguments, toss the race card--real smooth. You're trying to move the goalposts by accusing me of some sort of "racial" bias. And you don't know my race. And I ain't telling you, either.

I don't think the residence of the grand jury has any bearing on the validity of the charges, either. But if there were a SHRED of doubt, ANY question, ANY opportunity for there to be two sides to a story, I do believe a SF jury might be slower to rush to judgment than some others. The fact that they did indict suggests that there's at least SMOKE there. It actually doesn't mean the charges are "valid." That won't be decided until the case goes to trial. All it means is that, like Judy Tenuda says "It could happen."

And that's MY POINT--the one you seem to be obscuring with charges of racism, comparisons of images of abused children with bottles of tequila, and what-have-you.

[hunter]

246. Downloading or uploading a picture isn't molesting a kid either.

It's all electronic bits bouncing around the internet and if Ward's actions contibuted to the overall problem of child pornography, the harm he did to society or any individual was very small.

[MADem]

249. You have no problem revictimizing a child, then. And committing a federal crime.

I daresay the subjects of those images would call not call the harm to them "small." It's not "electronic bits." It's images of humans who were brutalized, being revictimized by that action.

You're all over the map on this issue. First, you say that Bush's minions are responsible for these charges, and now your excuse is "It ain't molestation. The harm is small."

It's a CRIME. A federal crime. If he in fact provided images to someone, and later received other images, he committed a crime.

Your moving of the goalposts and efforts to mitigate his alleged conduct are WAY more than a bit disturbing, I must say. This topic just isn't a matter for mitigation.

I find your justification of this CRIME--and it is one, even if you don't want to acknowledge that--a bit cretinous, frankly. Troubling.

[hunter]

255. I'm so sorry you are troubled. And see my post #250.

The Federal Government does not define CRIME for me. To be perfectly frank my ethics are mostly formed of my religious beliefs. If my religious and humanitarian beliefs were taking me one way, and the Federal Government was demanding I go some other way, I'd tell the Federal Government to go fuck themselves no matter how the laws were written. If this were Denmark during the German occupation I wouldn't be turning in my Jewish or homosexual neighbors, and I'm not going to pay any attention at all to people's immigration status. I don't ever hire anyone, so that's not a problem. Let the big Ag companies, who do hire illegal aliens, take that hit. (But they rarely do.)

Actually that's why most of my ancestors came to the United States, so they wouldn't have to put up with the sort of extremist bullshit oppressive governments dish out.

I'm a law abiding citizen but maybe that's mostly because my inclinations tend to be pretty consistent with Federal Law. Our family can attend Catholic Mass or not as we see fit, I'm utterly monogamous and heterosexual, I think paying taxes is a reasonable thing to do, and I abhor violence, corruption, stealing, child abuse, child pornography, vandalism, and any number of things that are against the law.

And I'm free to say the drug laws in this nation, the health laws in this nation, and the anti-obscenity laws in this nation all suck rocks, and the Bush Justice Department is full of turds.

If it's about Bernie Ward, again, then we don't know yet, do we? I'm not going to slime the man based on this piece of paper put forth by Bush political appointees of dubious intent and questionable ethical stances.

[MADem]

258. The federal government may not define crime for you, but they lock your ass up if they catch you

doing what THEY define as crime.

[hunter]

263. That may happen someday.

I'll probably get hauled away for telling His Majesty King George the first, Glorious Leader of the United States, Defender of the Great Corporate Way and All the Remaining Oil Fields of the Planet Earth, that he can go sit his naked ass on a big fat cholla cactus.

With penetration.

Things go down the drain quickly when a free people fear their own government.

The federal government should be afraid of the people.

I'm not going to be afraid of them locking my ass up. A lot of very good Christians have gone down that trail.

But I don't think it will come to that. The people are starting to get itchy, and they are finally going to throw these thieves out of their White House.

Ten years from now George W. Bush will be a universally hated man. There's nothing he can do now to pull his reputation out of the fire. As the oceans rise and oil becomes scarce, as the economy crashes, as the ice caps melt, as entire ecosystems die, George W. Bush will retain the title of Very Worst U.S. President for a long time to come.

Whoever we elect next year, wish them well. There's a huge mess to clean up, eight years in the making, and we didn't do anything to prevent it because we were afraid.

A brave people would have thrown the thieves out years ago.

[High Plains]

298. Grand juries are led by the nose by prosecutors.

Where do you think that old saying "A prosecutor could indict a ham sandwich if he wanted to" comes from?

How many times do you hear of a grand jury no-billing somebody? Not often.

A grand jury is the prosecutor's show.

[MADem]

196. Uh, they weren't 'snooping around' in his computer. Read the article.

The 'leftist reporter' ENTERED A CHAT ROOM and downloaded AND uploaded images.

The "Bushites" didn't indict him--a San Francisco GRAND JURY did.

Facts are always helpful things.

[AlCzervik]

48. before i damn him or defend i will wait until more information comes out, having said

that i hope it's some misunderstanding.

[Diresu]

50. Pedophilia is a medical problem

While I believe he should be punished to the FULLEST extent of the law I also feel sorry for him. All of the evidence that has come out over the last 10 years suggests that pedophilia is a result of brain damage that occurs in the womb or very early in life. He probably has a mental illness that as of today there is no cure for.

Pedophiles are shorter than healthy men
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071022120203.htm

Pedophiles Have Deficits In Brain Activation
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070920091209.htm

Pedophilia May Be The Result Of Faulty Brain Wiring
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/071128092109.htm

A former Catholic priest researching a book on pedophilia? Please! Nobody is going to believe that.

[superconnected]

57. It might be a political problem now a days too. So easy to accuse

so easy to get rid of anyone.

I don't know if he did it. I just consider that it doesn't matter if he did or not. He's a ped now. The "alleged" is enough.

I have never seen a child porn pic before. I understand why it would be illegal to take them and pass them around - the victim doesn't deserve that. But, I don't understand why someone goes to prison for viewing a picture on internet. And I mean, ANY picture. That's just wierd to me. How can you comit a crime by looking at something.

[Diresu]

58. I don't know the particulars of the case but...

If he has child porn on his hard drive he should go to prison. Its as simple as that.

When we hear the charges we'll know how serious this is one way or the other.

[superconnected]

59. Yes, true he shouldn't be in possession of child porn.

[Diresu]

60. I really hope he didn't do it (nt)

[still_one]

65. So do I. Either way his career is ruined /nt

[verges]

82. Even after...

Even after you delete it, it is still on the hard drive. And, the police know how to get stuff back you deleted years ago!

[still_one]

64. If that is the case, I can't defend it, but until we know

all we can do is speculate

[stevedeshazer]

79. What happened to 'innocent until proven guilty?'

You don't know shit about Bernie.

[Drunken Irishman]

139. In the court of law.

This is not a court of law, so we do not have to abide by those rules.

Should we? Well it depends, DUers have no problem not using the innocent until proven guilty line when Republicans are caught doing a no-no, so why bring it out just for someone who might be progressive? We're the public, we can assign guilt or innocence all we want.

[stevedeshazer]

165. Are you sure you're on the right website?

I am for the same presumption of innocence for ANYONE.

Don't drop that turd in MY punchbowl.

[Drunken Irishman]

183. I do believe I am on the right website.

You're not the court of law. You have every right to look at someone as innocent until proven guilty, however, I do not. I have the luxury of making my mind up right on the spot and I don't have to wait for a trial.

[Name removed]

186. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Drunken Irishman]

190. Oh I see.

Well I think we're all on the wrong site, then, because I've seen MANY DUers automatically state someone's guilty without hearing any evidence, especially if it's a Republican.

Funny thing, though, I never said I thought Ward was guilty. All I said was that the term innocent until proven guilty does not apply to the American public -- rather, just the justice system.

[mitchtv]

142. You have him guilty

You are most likley wrong. You obviously don't know Bernie

[Garbo 2004]

146. Dr Frist? Don't need evidence and facts to form a diagnosis and verdict?

Ward was a priest for a couple of years twenty years ago. Left & got married, has 4 kids. Has done investigative reporting for the SF media.

Unless your contention is that anyone who's ever been a priest is a pedophile, the fact that for a brief time decades ago Ward was a priest is irrelevant and not in itself evidence of a crime or a "mental illness."

Ward's not charged with pedophilia, abuse, solicitation. Reportedly the charges are based on an instance of 2004 activity online and a subsequent Fed search of Ward's computer found nothing. The local US Attorney at the time recused himself and his office from the case and the DOJ took over the case and apparently waited 3 years to take it to a grand jury. If it was a slam dunk case, why the delay in pressing charges?

Considering that all the facts of the case haven't yet come out, your instant "diagnosis" seems a bit premature.

[High Plains]

299. This is bizarre.

We should punish medical problems?

Can we identify potential pedophiles with a brain scan maybe?

If so, can we punish them for their medical problem before they do anything? Preemptive punishment?

[napi21]

55. I'm not buyin this at all! I've been listening to Bernie for several years,

and I know he has created a lot of enemies because he doesn't believe things just because somebody says you should! He had a stand in host last night who said he would be doing the show last night and tonight. I HOPE Bernie is back on Friday and also has his Sunday God talk show. He's a good man, and I believe he could have downloaded some porn to research a book. Hell, I didn't realize THAT was even illegal! Is it also illegal to download how to build a bomb or how to make meth? I'm not trying to be a smart ass here, I really didn't know it was illegal to research for a book!!!!

I guess I've broken the law then too. I read web sites about the Suni and Shia beliefs. I researched the Wahabi religion. I just want to understand how they think. Hmmm...I guess I better start listening for the helicopters now.....

[still_one]

67. If you look at the link on KGO, it looks like he isn't on the schedule anymore

[napi21]

75. I see that, but at least his personality page is still there.

http://www.kgoam810.com/showdj.asp?DJID=3284

I sent him a note of encouragement. I said it before, and I'll say it agin. I don't believe he did anything wrong!

[musette_sf]

84. thanks for the link

i will do likewise.

and for those distractors who doubt the "research" defense:

"He also received a Scripps Howard Award for Excellence in Journalism for his work on a ten-part series, Heaven Help Us, which explored allegations of financial and sexual misconduct in the Catholic Archdiocese of San Francisco. It was a perfect issue for Bernie. It combined his religious background (he's a former Franciscan priest) and his investigative skills."

he's an INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER, for cripes sake.

[napi21]

85. Here's a link to Bernie's email if anyone is interested.

mailto:[e-mail]

[mitchtv]

144. done

[still_one]

86. I am going to reserve judgement until I find out what is going on /nt

[CountAllVotes]

120. I don't believe it either

not for one second. He was a Franciscan priest and gave it up and was a high school teacher, the topic being "religious studies". He's been doing Godtalk for 19 years! I am one of those that tunes in on Sunday morning to listen to him. In 2004, Bernie had a lot of discussion on "Godtalk" about the priests in San Francisco and the charges against O'Shea, the priest that was promoted to a Monsignor at Mission Dolores Church. He was outraged by this and it seemed that every Sunday for a very long time he discussed this situation in depth.

I believe that "The Lion of the Left" has been set-up and they are using his Catholicism as a tool to indict him!

[Rex]

66. So he was looking at preteens? And that it was for research?

That is his defense? I guess internet pron really is evil, should have been holy - man.

[still_one]

68. There is no defense IF he was looking at minors. I want confirmation of this though /nt

[Rex]

69. I hear ya.

[stevedeshazer]

80. It's ALLEGED.

It's NOT PROVEN.

Jeez.

[2rth2pwr]

100. Tell that to his lawyer. nt

[Nutmegger]

71. I see he has already been condemned without a trial.

:eyes:

I listen to Bernie Ward each night, and am shocked over the alleged charges. I hope he receives a free and fair trial.

What's sickening is that if he is innocent (and found innocent) of these charges, his life will forever be tarnished because those in this thread, and people like that all over America, have already condemned this man.

I doubt he'll return to KGO now. Doesn't matter now, he's already "marked". Might as well just put him on that damn pedo list.

[still_one]

87. I think you mean condemned, not commended. Either way I agree

[Nutmegger]

88. Oops

Thank you!

Damn spell check ...

[mainegreen]

73. I don't care if he's Jesus Christ himself. You look a child porn, you need to go down.

No 'researching a book' crap. That's a tired old excuse. If he said 'I was researching a book on it' he might as well have said 'yes I was looking at child porn'.

Of course, lets have a trial. But coming out with 'I was doing research' rings the scumbag alarm in my view.

[napi21]

90. Does that apply to the gov't porn researchers too?

Your statement doesn't even make sense. If nobody looked, nobody would ever be accused or convicted of posting, taking the pics, or anything else associated with internet child porn.

I don't know if Bernie is guilty of anything or not, but to state guilt simply because you don't think book research is valid is a foolish argument.

[hunter]

93. The gov't probably has the biggest stash of it in the world.

How else would they know what to look for?

[mainegreen]

109. What? Are you serious?

That's like saying it's the same thing if an average Joe buys a ton of cocaine 'for investigative purposes' or if the police do it, or that the man who doubts the average Joe is somehow foolish for being highly dubious. I don't buy it.

"I was researching" is sadly an excuse that many child porn perverts use. If he truly has legitimate investigative reasons, that should be easy as hell to prove in trial.

[Occulus]

121. Have you ever used usenet?

I ask this because it is frightfully easy to accidentally download suspect images without knowing they're suspect if you use usenet. A newsreader doesn't display a thumbnail of the images available on the usenet groups; the best you ever get is the name of the image- usually something like 0117NudiePic.jpg- and by the time you realize the image is suspect, it's too late; you've downloaded child pr0n. That's one of the biggest problems with usenet and child pr0n- the people who don't want to see it (i.e., most people) don't have an opportunity to filter it out, and the people who are posting it (the sick sick minority) take pains to make it look innocuous.

This has happened to me before, when I wasn't even looking for pr0n on the newsgroups. I could have buttered bread with my surprise.

Believe it or not, it is possible to see this material completely by accident. A collector, however, would intentionally have a collection.

[MADem]

211. He was in a CHAT ROOM and he both downloaded and PROVIDED images.

It's in the SFGATE article.

Accidentally viewing, sure. Downloading? Providing? Horse of a different color.

[regnaD kciN]

76. The $64,000 Question...

If, as he claims, he was doing this for a book, did the book get published? If not, was there any evidence he submitted it to publishers? If not (i.e. he decided not to go ahead with it), are there notes, drafts, etc. that demonstrate that he really was working on such a book?

If so, even if he technically violated the law by downloading the pictures, it would seem he has a First Amendment defense, just the same as a reporter who comes into contact with organized crime figures while doing a story on the Mob. (Or, for that matter, Morgan Spurlock if, as he seems to indicate, he tracked down and interviewed ObL.) OTOH, if there's no drafts, no notes, no evidence that he had done any work on a book, just the images on his computer...say goodbye, Bernie.

[cigsandcoffee]

97. How does looking at child porn relate to research on hypocrisy?

This is something I'd like his lawyer to explain.

[2rth2pwr]

99. Bernie, thru his lawyer admits accessing the photos and people on

this thread are saying this is a set up?

really?

[Peace Patriot]

102. There are different kinds of "set up's." The most obvious is the Fatherland

gestapo plants something on you. A subtler one would be a Fatherland gestapo operative feeding some child porn images to you, with some kind of hint that there is a story there that needs investigating. You take a look at it. You think there might be something to it--a news story even worthy of a book. But the trail goes cold. You abandon the project, and, four years later they sneak into your computer using Fatherland "unitary executive" powers to snoop on anybody, even journalists, find the images and charge you with child porn.

Think creatively. The Bushites are. I'll give 'em that. Charging Max Cleland--who left three limbs in Vietnam--with being a friend of Osama bin Laden was real creative work. And, wow, when the first guy who charged them with lying on Iraq WMDs--UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter--got hit with a similar smear to this one of Bernie Ward--THAT was masterful! It took him years to get his reputation back, and, by that time, bang-bang, shoot-shoot, a half a million innocent people slaughtered in Iraq to get their oil.

We have to start thinking like THEY do, upfront. Shield ourselves from their "evil eye," of course--and not really and truly think like they do, but rather stop being so fucking naive.

We should also learn lessons about our Democratic Party leaders colluding with Bushites. That happened on the Kevin Shelley smear in California. The state party legislative leaders couldn't wait to get rid of Diebold's arch enemy, Shelley, and help Schwarzenegger to APPOINT a Diebold shill to the office of Sec of State, and participated in the Bushite smear against Shelley. Might have been all those billions running through their fingers, for all those Diebold/ES&S crapass, riggable voting machines, or...they're just traitors. They don't believe in democracy any more. Anyway, who knows, maybe Bernie Ward has been on Diane Feinstein's case lately (what with the PDA's effort to get her censured by the state party). I haven't heard Bernie's latest shows (due to problems with my radio setup). I don't know what he's been covering lately. But Feinstein is a Bushite, in case you didn't know. And it wouldn't surprise me at all if she was using their methods to silence the best leftist commentator in the Bay area. I imagine she's pretty tight with the Fatherland gestapo.

Wake up, is what I'm saying. Smell the smear. Spot the rat bastards' tails as they scurry into the shadows. DON'T BELIEVE everything (or anything) you read in corporate news rags that Bushites play like a piano. This child porn thing is a lethal weapon in the hands of people who don't give one goddamn about you and me, or the truth. We're dealing with people who kill for power. People with no conscience, no loyalty, people who have corrupted everything we hold dear, including our justice system, our police forces, our representatives, our election system, our courts and our military.

Wake up!

We have got to make the OPPOSITE presumption, from what these bastards want us to believe, when we read a news item like this. We have got to do this. We have got to stop getting sucked in. We have got to become fully conscious of their newscrap. They are playing with our minds. They are pushing our buttons. And we've got to learn how to stop this at the door of consciousness.

Just as with Kevin Shelley, it really doesn't matter if this charge is bogus or not. It's out there. It's ruined Bernie Ward ALREADY--ruined his life, ruined his career, silenced his hard-hitting leftist commentary--unless he can do the miraculous, restore his reputation in this putrid context of corporate news monopolies and a political establishment that is so corrupt, I'm surprised that some of our so-called representatives don't glow in the dark. Hell, even the gestapo said it was "TECHNICALLY" a crime. It won't matter whether he's "technically" convicted or not. Total exoneration will NOT restore his life and career. They've finished him. They've silenced him--barring a miracle (say, he finds out, and is able to expose, what's really behind it--or who).

Criminy, don't you SEE what they've done? They tortured thousands of people in Iraq, and in Guantanamo Bay, WITH NO CHARGES AGAINST THEM. They ruined the career of an Air Force chaplain at Guantanamo Bay--Capt. James Yee--IN THIS SAME WAY. BOGUS CHARGES OF PORNOGRAPHY. And then slapped a gag order on him! They had nothing on him--NOTHING! They tried to charge him with treason--for having names of prisoners in his computer. (He was the chaplain!) God knows what was really going on with this. They gagged him! Maybe he was trying to get names to the Red Cross. Nobody knows why they went after him. And when every charge against him was proven false, they charged him with having pornography in his computer, against regulations! And they did this with his family present, to ruin his life.

Wake up! These are foul evil-doers in charge of our country, and our system of justice, who have amassed vast dossiers of ILLEGAL spying material on everybody in the country who can cause them any trouble.

This is a very, very hard lesson to learn. We must learn to MISTRUST officialdom AND their propaganda arm, the corporate media. We must! They have broken trust with us. They are NOT trustworthy. And a good rule of thumb is total mistrust, upfront, of any charge such as this against anybody who is causing them any grief. And Bernie Ward most certainly qualifies. Someone upthread said that Bernie Ward wasn't important enough for them to bother to ruin. What a mistake! For one thing, I don't think that is true. Bernie Ward is a very influential commentator. But even if it was true, these horrid systems of spying, blackmail, domestic black ops, threats, career ruination and warfare against dissenters are often TRIED OUT, as exercises to test systems of punishment, to test operatives, to push the envelope, to see what works, before they are utilized on a larger target--or just for the hell of it, to see who will obey, who are the reliable "players."

You wonder how Bush and Cheney can still be in charge of this country? Wake up! They've been spying on EVERYBODY. They've got all kinds of booby traps ready for anybody who truly challenges them. Figure one system has just been tested. How to use child porn to silence one of the few radio commentators in the country worth listening to. One of the unbought. One of few honest people left in journalism. Gone!

We need to learn to think like this. This must be our first presumption--that there is a bad motive for taking this person down, and that the accused is more than likely innocent. We CLAIM that we believe in "innocent until proven guilty," but we don't really practice it. That's just bottom line fairness, for ANY accused. But when it comes to an influential leftist--knowing what we know about WHO is in charge of our justice system (George Bush), and who is in charge of our news media (5 far rightwing billionaire CEOs)--we should go even further, and presume ill-motived destruction of this person, UNTIL PROVEN OTHERWISE. Because, unless we do this, they can take ANYBODY down, at any time--without resistance, without opposition. They can slander and then isolate the target. They can push people to suicide. They can stage suicides. And they can silence people without killing them--by associating their name with child porn forevermore.

One of the very few good journalists in the country--gone. That should be the main perspective from which we view this--Bushite motive--until proven otherwise.

[Stewie]

110. Riiiiiiight

The "Fatherland Gestapo" is acting on the orders of the President of the United States...

...to "take out" a local radio host, whom few people have ever heard of, who's on the air from midnight to 1:00 a.m. A man so dangerous that Fox News has no problem having him to on bat around.

So they pass over Harry Reid, Al Gore, Barack Obama, Jimmy Carter, Randi Rhodes, Al Franken, Ed Schultz etc. etc. etc. to take out a local guy who has a one-hour show just before some infomercial on real estate. A guy who's on the air in San Francisco, where everyone already agrees with him and he'll likely be replaced by another liberal host.

Not that there's any point in arguing with conspiracy nuts. They just invent more conspiracies to explain away the holes in all their other conspiracies.

[hogwyld]

119. The BFEE took out Randi already

By attacking her and covering it up. The used their influence to steal a presidency from Al Gore. They have probably threatened Harry with something otherwise we would have begun impeachment procedings by now. I respect PeacePatriots positions as he's been here a Looooong time.

[Stewie]

129. I'm assuming you're kidding, but just in case

Randi was NOT "attacked." Even she says so.

Not that it matters. Conspiracy nuts just invent new conspiracies to explain why the last conspiracy doesn't make sense. Let me guess. The CIA showed Randi satellite footage of how they shot down Paul Wellstone's plane, and told to her be quiet or it will happen to her.

You do realize this is the same administration that can't even get their "war on Iran" together, can't save Colin Powell from looking like an idiot in front of the U.N., didn't plant weapons in Iraq when they were exposed on that?

But I'm sure all that's part of the conspiracy, too, just like the "attack" on Randi. It's all part of the conspiracy.

[Stewie]

130. Wait, if they have something on Reid so terrible it stops impeachment....

...wouldn't they have leaked it during the election, taken his seat and stopped the Democrats from ever even getting a majority?

I'm sick and tired of being discredited because we're infested with conspiracy nuts.

[Name removed]

170. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[2rth2pwr]

123. Damn! I usually go to the 9/11 forum here to be entertained by the

goof balls, but this has to go into some kind of tinfoil Hall of Fame. (You left out any reference to the Reptoids, other than that pretty good.)

"There are different kinds of "set up's." The most obvious is the Fatherland gestapo plants something on you. A subtler one would be a Fatherland gestapo operative feeding some child porn images to you, with some kind of hint that there is a story there that needs investigating. You take a look at it. You think there might be something to it--a news story even worthy of a book. But the trail goes cold. You abandon the project, and, four years later they sneak into your computer using Fatherland "unitary executive" powers to snoop on anybody, even journalists, find the images and charge you with child porn. "

[hunter]

135. Good writers tend to lean left.

That's why Dennis Miller's shows are not funny.

[TheWatcher]

185. You should try the Yahoo Entertainment Forum

It would probably be more compatible for someone of your intellectual prowess.

[2rth2pwr]

202. So, you think it was a set up?

I await the logic of your analysis.

[ronnykmarshall]

137. Oh that KKKarl!!

Is there no limits to his evil!

:sarcasm:

[Peace Patriot]

103. Point of order! Merely looking at child porn does not make you a child pornographer.

Can we please clear this up? And I don't care what bullshit laws Bushites have made. Merely looking at an image IS NOT A CRIME. There are hundreds of reasons for doing so, that have NOTHING to do with abusing children. Journalistic interest. Scientific interest. Academic interest. Medical and psychiatric interest. Parental interest. Archival interest. Criminal investigative interest. Forensic interest. Literary interest (crime novel writers, for instance). Political (policy-making) interest. Teacher interest. Counselor interest. And, in addition to these and many other kinds of legitimate interest, having nothing to do with criminality, I would defend general intellectual curiosity--to understand this phenomenon as a subject of human behavior. Like murder, like rape, like war, many things we humans do are horrible. And we need to understand them. And we have a right to understand them. We have a right not to have a legal prison placed around our brains, cordoning off some aspect of human behavior that we are forbidden even to LOOK AT.

The problem is that child porn creates a kind of hysteria that seems to justify vast invasions of privacy--even to the presumptions, by law enforcement, as to what a person is THINKING when they merely LOOK AT child porn images.

Well, what about all those chubby naked little baby angels in Renaissance paintings? How far are we going to take this? Are we going to put a chip in peoples' heads to monitor what think and feel, looking at images?

Fascists love this kind of hysteria. They love any handle they can get with which to invade peoples' mind, and make laws against what people THINK. The Catholic Church has been doing this for a couple a thousand years. It is not healthy. It is not democratic. And it is a serious violation of the First Amendment to restrict what adults can LOOK AT. It EASILY leads to many kinds of fascist abuses of power. And what an irony, that the human institution that is the most guilty of trying to control what people THINK--the Catholic Church, with its long, bloody history of putting a prison around the human mind--ends up being so guilty of child abuse!

That said, I do NOT, in any way, want to downplay the seriousness of crimes against children, and I have nothing but admiration for our society's efforts to stop this horrible kind of abuse. I can remember a time, in my childhood, when sexual abuse of children was an absolutely forbidden topic. It was taboo. There were no words to describe it. It was entirely hidden. Families, schools and churches covered it up. And it was so traumatic that children's minds, in self-defense, 'forgot' what had happened. I can testify to the truth of "buried memories." That happened to me. And I was able, later, to verify my "recovered" memories (which occurred spontaneously, with no prompting by anybody, for any purpose). That is how hidden it was. You dare not even remember it, it was such a bad and hidden thing.

I applaud all efforts to bring the truth out. And I sympathize with efforts to protect children, and teach children to defend themselves. I do think, though, that our society has gone a bit nutso on this subject, when it charges an 18 year old with statutory rape for sleeping with 16 year old, or arrests a small boy for grabbing or kissing little girls. It is only in situations of unequal power that we, as a society, should be concerned and take action.

I am also a "strict constructionist" on the First Amendment. Possessing and looking at images should not be a crime. It is unconstitutional to make it a crime. Because you CANNOT prove that looking at an image (or reading something--same thing) constitutes an intent to commit a crime. And looking and reading are NOT crimes.

In ancient Greece--where the foundation of our civilization was created--it was common practice for men to mentor small boys and young men as sexual partners. Do we now ban the reading of Greek playwrights, poets and philosophers, who considered this to be normal healthy practice? Are we going to ban "Lolita" (novel about a dirty old man who seduces a teenage girl and takes her as a lover)? Is Vladamir Nabokov a criminal for writing it? You can't do this--unless you want a fascist state. You cannot restrict what adults see and read. THOUGHT is NOT a crime. I stand with Thomas Jefferson, who said: "I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny imposed upon the mind of man." (It's inscribed around his statue in Washington DC.) There are no exceptions, in my opinion. The human mind must be free, and it WILL be free, in all kinds of perverse ways, no matter how many laws we make to restrict it, and no matter how many billions we pour into a police state, and waste upon things that are not--or should not be-crimes.

As with "terrorism," we must find the ways to protect ourselves, and protect those who cannot protect themselves, without violating our most valuable endowment as a species: the free human mind.

I really and truly DON'T CARE if Bernie Ward had child porn images in his computer. I do not consider it a crime. I don't care that he had them, and I don't care that he looked at them deliberately. Because I know his political commentary, I trust that he had a good purpose--but it is really none of my business. They are not accusing him of child abuse. They are not even claiming that he had a particular interest in child porn. They are targeting him merely for a couple of images--of quite old venue, four years ago. Christ, what have we come to, that we would agree that such a thing is a crime?

And, once again we must ask--as with so many police resources that are WASTED on non-crimes--what the hell are they doing this for--when REAL crimes are going unsolved? We've got heinous criminals running our country, for godssakes! Why don't they go after THEM?

Well, we know why. Some of the most heinous criminals of our age are in charge! Slaughterers and torturers are hiring and firing, promoting and demoting, favoring and purging--in our major law enforcement agencies, and everywhere else within the federal government. Child porn was a particular obsession of that little fascist worm, Alberto Gonzalez. Whenever he got caught lying, he would squeal about "keeping our children safe." It was enough to make you vomit. And there are no doubt quite a number of hired, promoted, favored Gonzales operatives remaining in our law enforcement agencies, who are similarly obsessed--not with stopping crime, but with using certain "hot button" crimes as tools for career advancement, for fooling the public out of more money, and for covering up other crimes, such as the politicalization of justice, the criminalization of the poor, the abuse of prisoners, and the protection of criminal syndicates that play ball with the Bush Cartel.

I don't trust the Bush Junta with the child porn issue any more than I trust them on the matter of WMDs in countries with lots of oil. I certainly want to see any use of children in child porn, and any kind of abuse of children, stopped and prevented, and I think this is a valid use of laws and law enforcement. Protecting the weak is pretty much what law enforcement is--or should be--all about. And I have tremendous respect for cops who understand this, and who do what is often a dangerous and difficult job with honor and courage.

But with Bushites in charge, the purposes of the law have become bent and twisted. We are in grave danger from that police state mentality, and it is inflicting unwarranted harm on many people. Police powers have been, and are being, grossly abused. In this context, I distrust any police or prosecutorial action that has the Bush White House as its original authority. I think that the Bushites' use of the child porn issue is, at best, a cynical ploy to score rightwing political points and acquire more fascist powers; and at worst...well, with the Bernie Ward prosecution, we may be looking at the worst. The use of child porn accusations to smear and destroy political opponents. It is too much like the Scott Ritter case (and other smear examples) not hold that suspicion up front, until proven otherwise.

[MetaTrope]

105. It wouldn't be surprising if merely entering "Child Porn" into Google Images turns up some hits

And from the sound of it, just skipping past the thumbnails alone would be enough to get charges like this filed against you.

[MADem]

276. That isn't what he did, though.

He entered a chatroom and UPLOADED images in December. Then, in January, he uploaded AND downloaded. That's in the indictment.

We're not talking "accidental viewing" here.

If there's a book draft on his hard drive, maybe there's a factor in mitigation for him in terms of his sentence. If there isn't, though, the first question any juror would have to have in their mind is "Where did he get the images that he UPLOADED in December?"

[MetaTrope]

300. Ah, I can see it then

In the shadow world of warez and movie sharing, you aren't "in" to an illegal download site until you upload something first. That's undoubtedly how the child porn networks operate also. Which means, if that's what he was investigating, such is what he did.

If he was doing it for photos of hot little infants to jack off to, then one has to admire his self-control in making do with memories of a couple of deleted images for all these years. But hey, that will serve him well in the federal slammer, won't it?

[Stump]

107. So it should not be illegal?

To look at a 5 year old getting raped by a old ass pervert as long as it's for research. I wonder how you would feel if the child was one of your relatives. Unfuckingbelievable.

[hunter]

126. Don't think about that too much, okay now?

:eyes:

So if I was on this jury, I'd ask to see the pictures. And then I'd want the prosecutor arrested for distributing child porn, and then all the jurors arrested for looking at it.

That's the only way we can wipe out child porn -- we must imprison anyone and everyone's whose mind has been poisoned by it.

( :sarcasm: tag, for those who need it. )

[SoxFan]

203. Bigotry and Deviance in one post

A defense of pedophilia and child porn AND Catholic-bashing in a single post. You must be very proud of yourself.

[hunter]

206. I bash the right wing of the Catholic Church and it's history all of the time.

And I go to Mass on Sunday with a pretty clear conscience.

I'm fortunate to live in a fairly liberal parish, so it's not too painful.

:P

Peace Patriot irritates me sometimes, but I didn't see the post as Catholic bashing or as a defense of child porn.

On the contrary, many of the posts condemning Bernie Ward imply that since he is a former Catholic Priest then the odds are much increased that he is a pedophile.

The right wing is doing it's best to fragment the Catholic Church. They would like very much for the Catholic Church to abandon the principles of Social Justice for the right wing politics of condemnation and exclusion.

[Peace Patriot]

216. Defense of pedophilia and child porn? Good God, you exemplify exactly what

I was trying to discuss--the INQUISITIONAL, McCarthyite, fascist powers that the Bushites' slimiest hypocrisy--"protecting our children" --makes us prey to.

You are accusing me of defending "pedophilia" and "child porn" because I was trying to discuss the abuse of the law and its unconstitutional nature. You are trying to slime me for A THOUGHT, for a discussion of law and social attitudes, for pointing out the potential for abuse of laws that turn THOUGHTS into crimes.

But, go ahead, light the pyre, burn the witch!

That is McCarthyism, my friend. If I "associate with known communists," that makes me a traitor and a witch to be burned at the stake. If I happen to think--and say or write--that communists have some good ideas, that should be discussed and considered, then *I* am part of a worldwide communist conspiracy to violently overthrow the U.S. government.

You are criminalizing THOUGHT--or, in any case, you are trying to smear me for applying reason and thought to a subject that I am supposed to feel hysterical about--child abuse, child porn. Did I "defend" pedophilia? Did I "defend" child porn? I did not. That is a scurrilous accusation. McCarthyite statements like that often slide into imprecision as well. For instance, you are presuming that pedophilia is a crime....

Pedophilia is a psychological CONDITION, it is not a crime. Merely thinking something, or experiencing emotions, is NOT a crime. A crime requires an ACTION that harms someone. It requires a VICTIM. Is THINKING ABOUT the rape of an adult woman, and having a psychological condition in which you find that thought pleasurable, a CRIME? IT IS *NOT*! Is THINKING ABOUT a bank robbery, and lusting after riches that are not yours, a CRIME? No! A crime requires an ACTION with a VICTIM.

Similarly, looking at a child porn IMAGE is an innocent act, protected by the Constitution, until proven otherwise by an ACTUAL crime--sexually abusing a child. And I am not naive about this. If there is evidence that children are being harmed--used for pornography or sexually abused--I would probably approve of surveillance--of porn sites, or porn networks--to catch actual criminals and destroy criminal syndicates, but I would never make the mere thinking of thoughts, or viewing of images, or reading or writing of words into a crime. That is the distinction I am trying to make.

It is a similar situation to a person checking a book on bomb-making out of the library. SHOULD law enforcement have the power to KNOW what books people check out (or what web sites they visit), in the absence of any evidence of a crime? Should knowledge of bomb-making, or possessing of books on bomb-making, or materials that COULD be made into a bomb, BE a crime? Bush would like to terrorize you into thinking that--so he and his criminal syndicate can use the law to oppress you, and can rip up the Constitution and spy on everything you and everyone else is doing. It is absolutely classic fascism to hold citizens guilty of THOUGHT CRIMES as if the thought IS the crime--or as if the speech, or the pamphlet, or the book, or the image IS the crime. You shout "Down with Bush!" these days, and you can bloody well find yourself in detention for "threatening" the president.

And the problem very much IS *WHO* will have the power to make those police/prosecutorial decisions--as much as it a question of fundamental constitutional rights--especially the First Amendment, which protects the freedom of the MIND.

The Bushite Justice Department cannot be trusted. The Bushites themselves are master criminals. This is an extremely dangerous situation for all of us, but especially for anybody who opposes Bushites effectively and publicly. And we have seen them use police state powers, and powers of corporate media smear, time and time again, to punish people who oppose them. It is difficult enough to determine what the limits of the law should be, under the Constitution, with relatively honest law enforcement agencies. With people like Bush, Cheney, Gonzales and Rove in charge for seven years now, we CANNOT trust ANY prosecution, ANY accusation, ANY conviction, or ANY law they have written or have made up on the spot to suit themselves and their nefarious purposes. And because of their obsessive secrecy, their unbelievably intrusive spying programs, their black budgets and all the rest, we have NO IDEA WHAT THEY ARE DOING! We DON'T KNOW how they might be setting people up. We DON'T KNOW who they are targeting. We DON'T KNOW who they may be blackmailing.

Even in their own ranks of lower level Bushites, they seem to have chosen people for political office who are especially slimy and corruptible, and have very likely been using dossiers on their various slimebag operations, and sexual involvements, to control their votes. In any case, we know FOR A FACT that they smear people who oppose them, and that they are without conscience in doing so. And these master criminals are in charge of "justice" in this country--with tools in their hands like the mere possession of child porn images now being a crime, in and of itself--not to mention their power to drag you out of your house and 'disappear' you into the night, never to be heard from again.

We might as well be living in the 12th Century, when the Catholic Church could accuse and convict you of heresy and throw you in prison and torture you and burn you at the stake--for THINKING something. And they would still be doing it, if it had not been for the Enlightenment, to which we owe the First Amendment. Bushites are very like those most un-christian of popes and bishops who used the vague crime of "heresy" to acquire property and power, and not just to smash dissent, but to invade the mind itself, and to control THOUGHT. And the kind of hysteria that they could create about "heretics" and "witches" is so similar to the McCarthyite hysteria about "communism," and the Bushite hysteria about "terrorists," gays, "liberals," pedophiles and child porn, as to make me very uneasy, indeed.

Fear and hysteria do not solve problems. They are the tools of fascist oppression.

[Throd]

242. It is illegal to possess. How can you view it without possessing it?

[Stump]

106. They didn't have to access his computer

He alerted the feds when he accessed a known child porn site. That's how all these dumb-fuck pedophiles get caught. (I'm not referring to Bernie because it is alleged he did this) My friend is a computer crimes detective and do you really think they have to access your computer to bust your ass? When they knock on you door with a warrant, your ass is already cooked.

[cannabis_flower]

128. So if I ...

accidentally stumble onto a known child porn site and report it, then I'm guilty of viewing child pornography. If that's the law, it's crazy.

[progressivebydesign]

176. There was a mention of the law in the sfgate story..

It's something like if you stumble on more than a few images by mistake you have to REPORT it, and then delete it (but nothing every really deletes, of course), or else you can be thrown in prison. Most people don't know of that law, but now we do. If you accidentally find yourself in that situation, you have to alert the authorities.. but I'm not sure which onese. But that might be a good idea, as you would be helping them to catch the pornographers, etc., I guess.

[cannabis_flower]

270. Yeah right..

and then if they didn't know about it, now they do.

[fascisthunter]

207. .

[Stump]

213. Well...

What if you decided to click on the thumbnails or take a peek at some of the pics you accidentally came across. Trust me, they know every keystroke in these investigations...

[0007]

116. The only thing on the square these days are professional wrestling, duh?

Who would of 'thunk' it?

[hunter]

125. It seems like there has been a slow burning mainstream media purge...

Look what happened to Dan Rather, and maybe now the writers strike.

It will be interesting to see how long the writers strike drags on, and which writers come back if it becomes a war of attrition.

[Bozita]

132. Scott Ritter, Ashleigh Banfield, Peter Arnett, Phil Donahue -- I'm sure there's more

IIRC, they tried the child porn bit on Scott Ritter.

[MADem]

155. No--Scott Ritter made a date with an underaged teen ager on the internet.

They bagged him at a McDonald's where he was to meet her. It was a sting operation, sorta like the Chris Hansen Dateline efforts.

Bernie was in a chat room too--that's why he's in court, charged with both downloading and distribution: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/12/07/MNFHTPMQD.DTL

[Judi Lynn]

156. Do you have a link to evidence of this child molestation arrest of Scott Ritter?

It has always been a source of amazement that the one man the _Bush administration wanted to disable, the one man who was telling the world there were no WMD's in Iraq before _Bush's invasion, during the time _Bush was trying to lay the emotionally charged groundwork for his filthy plans, was suddenly and neatly, at exactly the right time, quickly taken out of the way with precision, just like his dear papa's bombing missions during his own war against Iraq.

I never did see the report on how this was proven, or what was the outcome. I'm certain that since you speak with such assurance that you'll have a link you can quickly post for the slow learners among us.

[Garbo 2004]

159. Ritter has admitted arrest, case was sealed and won't discuss particulars.

Apparently according to AP/UPI wire reports local media reports contemporaneous with the arrest provided info on the charges. CNN cites a "source close to the investigation."

http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Top_News/2003/01/22/old_arrest_could_silence_iraq_arms_expert/8355/
http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/01/22/ritter.arrest/

[MADem]

160. Ya know, you could have JUST as quickly gone to Der Google and typed in

" Scott Ritter arrested" and your first hit would have been this:
http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/01/22/ritter.arrest/
ALBANY, New York (CNN) -- Scott Ritter, a former U.S. Marine and U.N. weapons inspector who has been an outspoken critic of a possible war with Iraq, was arrested in 2001 and charged with a misdemeanor after allegedly communicating with an undercover officer posing as a 16-year-old girl, a source close to the investigation has told CNN.



You could have gone to the generally sympathetic Wikipedia and gotten this quite carefully cited account as well: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Ritter#Legal_problems

In 2001, Ritter was arrested near Albany, NY.<26> News reports state that Ritter had brushes with police on two occasions, both involving allegations of intent to meet underage girls after chatting on the Internet.<27> After an agreement with Assistant District Attorney Cynthia Preiser, the charges were suspended for six months, and were dropped after no further allegations arose. All court records from this matter were sealed. The District Attorney fired Preiser for failing to bring the matter to his attention.<28> According to WTEN-TV, Ritter underwent court-ordered sex offender counseling from an Albany psychologist.<27>


Ritter apparently wasn't up to speed on NY law, as the age of consent in that state is seventeen, or he liked to live dangerously: http://www.coolnurse.com/consent.htm

Yep, you could have gotten that information in two shakes of a lamb's tail, rather than typing out a long diatribe, with subscript, even, ascribing NEFARIOUS intent to everyone from BushCo to ME, for "daring" to mention something that was carried in news reports across the land. But NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! You couldn't do that, could you? Why?

It seems that every time I encounter you, you're engaged in a petty, childish exercise called

Shooting the Messenger.

It's rather unattractive, too. But hey, here ya go, 'Slow Learner' (Your characterization, not mine).

I happen to dislike adults who prey on children. And I don't give them a "pass" because they claim to be "liberals" or "antiwar." That doesn't make me a "conservative" or "prowar" though.

What it makes me is someone who has zero tolerance for adults who fuck with kids.

Clear enough for you?

Oh, and Google really IS your friend, too.

[izquierdista]

166. Zero tolerance

More like zero investigation after an accusation has been made.

[MADem]

193. In which case?

I think there was 'investigation.' There was 'evidence.' Unless you think the liberal grand jury in SF are a bunch of Bush stooges, or the Democratic prosecutor in NY was somehow co-opted.

Ward is accused of both downloading AND providing 'images.' He so did in a CHAT room, likely one of those FBI sting efforts. Those details are in the SFGATE link provided upthread. He hasn't written a book that I could find, dealing with hypocrisy OR child porn. This isn't just an 'asshole prosecutor' going after him--a Grand Jury of regular San Francisco folk made the decision to indict.

Ritter did a similar thing, only he struck up a conversation with someone he thought was underage in a chat room, the details of which aren't clear to us as they weren't released (the prosecutor was apparently a Democrat, cut him a good deal with sealed record/diversion/parole, and got fired after the fact for so doing) but whatever he proposed to the decoy was sufficient to get him charged. He 'did the Dateline,' like Chris Hansen's show, and went to meet the subject at a Mickey D's. And he's done it more than once.

[Judi Lynn]

167. Hey, thanks! I was actually more interested in proof he committed a crime, and didn't articulate it

well.

I don't see proof he committed the crime, obviously. If they had evidence, they certainly should have plunged right ahead and put this predator behind bars, where he belonged.

What would have prevented their doing this? Child predators don't belong on the street.

They must not take the practise of the law seriously enough.

[grasswire]

181. wrong

Scott Ritter made a date with a police officer who had been posing as a teenager on the Internet.

[MADem]

212. Explained in full in post 160. nt

[gregrocker]

174. Real possibility of a set-up

Bernie is not just a local San Francisco host. His show is heard in the entire left half of the country at that hour where he has literally millions of loyal listeners. Those of us who have listened for 10 years know him to be the absolute toughest fighter the left has on the radio - no one even comes close. He doesn't suffer fools and sometimes bloodies them badly. He can take down a politician like crooked Rep. Richard Pombo as a small side project. He strips the lies off of the Bush administration in real time, like a whipmaster flaying the skin off of a deserving criminal.

We knew of course that the plan was to replace the U.S. Attorneys with political hitmen who would prosecute those who got in the way of the GOP's filthy plan to steal elections and ramrod through their hideously unpopular agenda which has ruined us in the world. To have the extant US Attorney recuse himself so this case was brought by the same Pat Robertson-educated Justice Dept political operatives who Bernie lambasted like no-one else, is even more fishy since the US Attorney knew he couldn't get away with it and retain the confidence of our U.S. Senators. Bernie was Barbara Boxer's top aide to the Pentagon and dug up a ton of porky dirt on them while he was there. He's made a lot of enemies.

The religious right has always relished using porn as a weapon to destroy their political opponents. The dirty trickster training camp known as College Republicans, under Rove, Ralph Reed and Abramoff, actually hatched plans to plant similar porn on political opponent's computers. It was always on standby as their nuclear option because just the accusation can destroy someone.

So keep all of this in mind as you parse the "evidence" that the crooked Justice Department, whose chief was just forced to resign in disgrace for his political chicanery, presents in the next few weeks. They are going after our one true "Lion of the Left" with the dirtiest weapon in their arsenal. Already the knuckle-walking baboons are circling in a right wing thug lynch mob. Who will stand for the one guy who stood strongest for us, never wavering and always - ALWAYS - proven to be right?

[Bozita]

179. Welcome to DU. ... BTW, that's a helluva first post!

[BrotherBuzz]

182. I agree, helluva first post

but then again, it took gregrocker eight months to compose his thoughts.

gregrocker, I expect more of the same, but sooner. Welcome to DU.

[TheWatcher]

184. Outstanding first Post Greg

And so very eloquently put. Unfortunately there is a Cadre of those on DU who would label your thoughts as "conspiracy nuttery", because it doesn't fit into the paradigm of their Matrix they so desperately wish to live in.

But don't be swayed by that. You make excellent points, and since the story broke, the whole thing stinks to me.

After all we have seen these past seven years, I need no more convincing there is nothing that people in power will not do in order to retain it, and punish and destroy those it sees as a threat to their ability to keep, control, wield, or expand it.

Some simply will not allow themselves to believe or understand the direness of the times we live in, but those who do must remain vigilant and sound the alarm, and keep shining the light.

Whether those who choose to live in the Matrix can handle it or not.

[izquierdista]

192. Not just a right wing lynch mob

Plenty of liberals, leftists, and left-wingers who will gladly come running with some rope when they hear an accusation, as this post has shown.

You are right about it being the right wing's "nuclear option" because while their other bogeymen like racism and anti-Semitism will get them laughed off the stage nowadays, Americans still have deep seated sexual phobias about bogeymen who will touch them in their private areas. Match up that bogeyman with the possibility that it could be their sweet innocent child being touched, and you've got a convert. A sap who will never ask to see the evidence, never question the prosecution's version of events, someone who will be yelling "throw away the key!" all during the trial.

[Garbo 2004]

209. Not a set up since Ward essentially through his reps admits to possession and distribution. Defense,

apparently based on comments made to media, likely will argue that what he did was for journalistic research purposes, constitutes a "technical" violation of the law and that this is a case of selective prosecution.

KGO article/video here: http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/iteam&id=5821709

Indictment unsealed yesterday in .pdf format here: http://abclocal.go.com/three/kgo/bernie_ward_indictment.pdf

To be clear: Bernie Ward is not claiming he was "set up," but that the authorities know that what he did was for investigative journalistic research purposes only, there was nothing on his computer when they searched it and prosecutors had the discretion whether or not to prosecute the case and that they are doing so knowing that it was a technical rather than intentional violation of the laws against possession/distribution of child porn.

Prosecutors likely will argue that the law is the law which does not discriminate based on intent: Ward violated the law by his actions and also by not reporting what he found to the authorities.

Apparently, according to SF Chron, Ward was in a "monitored" chat room and that's where his online activity was picked up. By whom is the question not yet answered. Were the Feds monitoring the activity or a citizen "watch" group or individual? KGO TV article mentions a complaint from Oakdale to the local authorities that was then turned over to the Feds. That suggests that it was not part of a Fed "sting" operation.

Bottom line though, it appears that Ward did violate the law and so is liable for prosecution. Whether the prosecution is warranted under the circumstances is a matter for discussion, but to date it appears that Ward has admitted to "technically" violating the law. Which doesn't feed into the "set up" argument.

[MADem]

222. Aren't YOU the killjoy!!!

All the conspiracy theorists here were just foaming at the mouth, wanting this to be a BushCo set up. Of course, the SFGATE article said plainly that he entered a chat room and both downloaded and distributed images--so, unless he was drugged or brainwashed like the Manchurian candidate, he had to know what he was doing--whether it was for nefarious reasons, or for 'research.'

The other problem I see that he has are the DATES. This wasn't "one time at the computer" -- he is accused of distributing ON OR ABOUT 23 December (Jesus, Merry fucking Christmas!) and 'between January 1st and January 13th' -- two counts of distribution.

There is only ONE count of "receiving," which occurs on or about those later dates, which makes the "accidental clicking" excuse even more remote.

The other problem that I see with his defense is that he plainly HAD in his possession some illicit material in December, and he PROVIDED it. He was providing BEFORE he was 'receiving.'

So you gotta ask yourself, where did he get THAT material?

[hunter]

244. He downloaded and uploaded it. So what?

Peace Patriot is a better writer than I am, but man, I do agree this whole thing reeks. Even if I was in the business of saving souls from the evil of child pornography, I wouldn't touch anything like this that bore the putrid seal of the Bush Administration.

And those things you insinuate in this post, that his intent was evil, make it seem more likely that his intent was as he claimed, and not less.

He uploaded whatever he needed to get access to the chat room on December 23, and they let him into their toxic club between January 1st and January 13.

So what?

At this point all we can do is wait.

Insinuating that Bernie Ward is a criminal without any other information is entirely unjustified, and makes you look like a supporter of the demonstrably corrupt Bush Justice Department, a bizarre world where perjury and torture are unactionable crimes, but a few nasty pictures on the internet condemn a man before his trial.

[Garbo 2004]

248. The "so what" is that it is a crime to do so, regardless of intent or purpose.

Bernie's attorney has already acknowledged that Bernie did violate the law. Why he did so is open to debate, but his attorney's statements leave really no doubt that Bernie "accessed and shared" kid porn, which under the law is criminal activity regardless of intent or the reasons for doing so.

You can argue that the law is too strict (although it does allow for finding kid porn if it is then reported to the authorities, which Bernie evidently did not do). Or that the DOJ had discretion in whether or not to pursue the case based on the circumstances, as Weinberg likely will do. But so far, besides the indictment itself, all the information available is from the defense side and appears to support the DOJ's case. Based on the law as it is, what Bernie did constitutes criminal activity regardless of his motives.

[hunter]

265. This isn't a court.

We are not lawyers.

What's your opinion?

Saying "that's the law" isn't saying anything. We already know that.

[Garbo 2004]

268. Well you post as if you didn't know that when you ask "so what?" to illegal activity that results

in federal felony charges, activity that he's admitted to. That's a rather big "so what."

My opinion, based on what Bernie's attorney has said, is that Bernie broke the law and thus is subject to prosecution. Bernie's not an uneducated, inexperienced, naive dope. If I can think of ways to safely investigate for journalistic purposes the legally dangerous and explosive topic of child porn trafficking on the net, like consulting with law enforcement for example, no doubt Bernie, who's been in the news business for many years. could too. That he evidently disregarded the very real legal jeopardy in which he was placing himself is solely on him. Getting busted and then asking for a "pass" from law enforcement, in this case the Feds, is not a good position to be in. They hold the cards and the chips. Regardless of Administration.

Not a good enough answer for you? Do I think Bernie's is or isn't into kiddie porn? I don't know, I have no way of knowing but I would be surprised and disappointed if he were. Would I stake my life on it one way or the other? No, of course not. Assuming his defense is legit, then I am surprised and disappointed that he would be so amazingly stupid and reckless to do what he did, leave himself open to such criminal charges by his actions, and then apparently be shocked that the Feds would prosecute him for it. Shocked perhaps because it's actually happening to him, but would he be similarly shocked if the Feds prosecuted someone else under the same circumstances? He can't be that naive. And Bernie as naive victim doesn't quite wash, regardless of his intentions.

Bernie may have a chance in court before a jury. At this point, regardless of the legal outcome, his only hope to salvage his rep is to substantiate his research defense. But even if the jury returns a verdict of "not guilty," the charges and his admitted actions likely will stick to him.

[hunter]

271. Ah, a poker analogy. That tells me a lot.

Andrew Oosterbaan has been trying to get a grip on internet pornography for a long time now, and his office has been floundering. They keep creating legal tools that turn out to be very obvious violations of civil rights, yet they do not change their tactics.

This tells me they are either incompetent and utterly naive about the actual nature of the internet, or else they have some ulterior motive in their regulations and procedures.

That this case sat on the shelf so long is also telling. The Bush Administration is going down like a burning dirigible, and the career people are thinking about their survival. It seems these career poker players have taken a dusty old but potentially high profile case off the shelf, a case by which they could demonstrate their talents to the next administration (if it should be so idiotic as this one was) or else to the private industry clean up crews that keep the streets clean of failed bureaucrats.

These guys have had many years to devise a strategy for getting child pornography off the internet, but they have been utter failures, and have only driven the problem further underground. They've created a whole new world where child porn is encrypted, and payments are laundered through false front businesses -- a world impenetrable by local or state authorities, or even the feds themselves.

Heck of a job, guys, heck of a job.

[Garbo 2004]

272. "A poker analogy?" You're reaching. How about "mud," the common analogy.

Again, Berie's attorney's own statements put the kabosh on the "they just pulled an old dusty case off the shelf" theory. Weinberg said that for the intervening years since the investigation they'd been trying dissuade the DOJ from prosecuting. The case evidently was active.

Reportedly the DOJ for at least the last 1.5 years was trying to get Bernie to cop a plea that involved prison time. Then gave an ultimatum and when that was refused, the DOJ went forward with the case. The grand jury indictment was filed with the court in September. Someone here I think said that the public announcement of the indictment was held back by agreement so as not to harm Bernie's Thanksgiving fund raising activities. Don't know if that's true.

Do the protracted apparent pre-indictment negotiations suggest that this wasn't a high priority case and the DOJ didn't think Bernie was some hard core threat to society who had to be taken off the streets immediately? Yes. Does it appear to support the defense's contentions that DOJ was aware of mitigating circumstances? It would appear so.

Another thought, while some folks are saying the DOJ is only prosecuting the case because it's Bernie, I wonder what would be the disposition of the case if it was just an obscure writer who couldn't afford a good attorney and was not a widely known Bay Area public figure? Would the case have been readily dropped, would negotiations go on for years or would the case have been prosecuted sooner?

[hunter]

273. It would have been another little feather for a press release.

Look for yourself:

http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/ceos/pressreleases.html

Lot's of crowing, but for what? There is no underlying strategy for dealing with child porn, except to catch a few guys and make examples of them.

Clearly, that's not working. All the Justice Department is doing is grabbing a few guys, the guys who are complete screwups, and parading them around for everyone to scorn, which only makes the oceans full of guys who are regularly trading this stuff a little more wary. The fact that a few guys get caught doesn't suddenly turn off their twisted sex drives, and it is damned easy to encrypt data and form trusted networks on the internet.

The kind of frontal assault the Justice Department engages in hasn't been effective, and they have wasted a tremendous amount of manpower and time devising hardware, software, procedural, and legal mechanisms that are shot down because they are either unconstitutional, or ineffective.

Look at this case. Bernie Ward was obviously naive and an easy catch. Whatever his motives were, they shut him down quickly, and probably for good, as soon as they notified him that he'd been caught in their net.

So now what? They've already taken the guy out of circulation. But they left the thing smoldering. Then about a year before the doomed Bush Administration is set to sink under the waves forever, they make a deal -- five years in prison.

:wtf:

Of course Ward is going to come out fighting, and that's the whole point of this.

But meanwhile there's still a flood of encrypted child pornography on the internet, and even if the Justice Department puts Bernie Ward in jail forever and throws away the key, and hangs his balls like a trophy in their offices, they haven't accomplished a damn thing to stop the flood.

So it ends up as just another ineffective and destructive program like the war on drugs, the war on terror, and all the other shit the federal government throws because they want us to be afraid, and they want us to think they are doing something.

It's a tower of crap, however it turns out.

[MADem]

279. No. He UPLOADED in December. He downloaded and uploaded in January.

Unless the indictment is wrong, and they've been sitting on it for over a year and a half, trying to work a plea deal with the guy. AND, it has been sealed since October so as to not ruin his Thanksgiving fundraiser.

There you go with the "Bush Administration" excuse. You'd probably be the mouth-foaming asshole out front with a pitchfork if this were Jeb Bush in this same fix.

This isn't 'accidental viewing.' This is someone who possessed pictures, and UPLOADED them in December. Then, he downloaded and uploaded several weeks later, in January. It's in the indictment. Unless, of course, the indictment is in error.

At this point, all we CAN do is wait. But spare me the "Evil BushCo" bullshit.

And go reread those DU rules--averring that I am a BushCo supporter, as you did in your post just above, is AGAINST them. But then, you disdain rules, because you're just so much "cooler" than everyone else, as you take pains to note, repeatedly...

:eyes:

[nedbal]

218. Welcome to DU

:yourock: :yourock: :yourock: :yourock: :yourock: :yourock: :yourock:

[Ecumenist]

269. GregRocker....I just got one thing ta say....

:applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo: :headbang: :headbang: :headbang: :headbang: :headbang: :headbang: :headbang: :headbang: :headbang: :yourock: :yourock: :yourock: :yourock: :yourock: :yourock: :yourock: :yourock: :yourock: :yourock:

Welcome to DU..Right glad ta meetcha...I believe you're going to be popular here...Bravo!!!!!!

[clixtox]

200. Doran Weinberg, Mr. Ward's attorney...

Is one of the best criminal defense attorneys in the country. He rarely, if ever, loses cases.

I just read that Phil Specter has hired Mr. Weinberg to defend him in a re-trial of the murder charges he is facing.

[droidamus2]

219. Just some ideas....

As others have noted, if the police/prosecutors had evidence that Bernie Ward was involved in large scale ongoing receiving and distribution of child pornography he would have been jailed 4 years ago.
As I understand grand juries a new one is seated each year and when a case is presented to them it is all the prosecutors show. By that I mean only the prosecutors case is presented no defense is allowed. So is it possible that in those 4 years this case was presented to 4 different grand juries and only this one chose to indict? Why is the case only being brought now? Does a District Attorney have to present a case to a grand jury to be able to indict and try a person or can the DA decide that the evidence is strong enough they can go directly to the court? Is the grand jury used as sort of a test case in those cases where the evidence may be questionable? By that I mean, if I'm the prosecutor and I think I have a case but the evidence isn't absolutely conclusive in my mind I can run it by the grand jury and see if I can convince them with the idea that if I can convince the grand jury with my evidence I will probably have a good chance of convincing a trial jury?

I don't know if Bernie is guilty or innocent. I presume he is innocent. I think the idea that he could have been investigating how the whole process worked for a book plausible. He should probably have checked how the laws were written prior to undertaking the research. Should he have run what he wanted to do passed the police before he did it? Probably would have been a good idea. So he may have made a mistake that falls within the 'letter of the law' as illegal but in the totality of the situation was he really involved in 'criminal activity'. Let's take another scenario, I want to do a book on drug dealing and use in America. To do my research I start hanging out with people involved in the illegal drug business. During my research I am present when drug deals are done, maybe even in a vehicle that is transporting drugs. Though I am not 'selling' or 'transporting' drugs myself would I still be held guilty if the vehicle is stopped? Could I be considered part of an 'ongoing conspiracy to distribute drugs'. I would definitely have knowledge of crimes being committed but if I narc on my research subjects then I can no longer get the kind of in-depth, first hand information I am seeking.

Another question, what good is the concept of 'innocent until proven guilty' if it only applies 'in the court'? If we condemn and figuratively 'lynch' an accused person in the public square thus destroying the persons reputation when we do not know the totality of the charges or evidence then what good does it do to be found 'not guilty '? How many times have you heard in a particular case where somebody was found not guilty that "Oh everybody knows/knew he/she was guilty they just go off on a technicality or the jury was just stupid"?

[MADem]

223. This might help.

Everything you wanted to know about grand juries: http://www.abanet.org/media/faqjury.html

If "Innocent until proven guilty" were the law of the land, and applied everywhere, we wouldn't be able to talk about Giuliani's illegal use of the NYC cops and taxpayer monies to screw around on his wife and squire his girlfriend about, we wouldn't be able to point a finger at Bush, Rove, Scooter or anyone else--because they'd all be "innocent." They haven't been tried and found guilty, after all, have they?

Leave the question of innocence or guilt to the courts, fine. But don't abrogate freedom of speech while so doing. We're not whispering in the jury's ear, after all. There's something to be said for speculation, supposition, educated guesses, and even gossip at times.

[wordpix]

224. "researching child porn" just like Japan researching whales by killing hundreds of them

[hunter]

227. No, it's not.

If I see a picture of Japanese whaling in my research, it's not the same as me killing whales.

I'm not killing a whale by posting this picture:



http://www.greenpeace.org.uk

[MADem]

233. But if you posted a picture of a three year old being brutalized, you'd be

REVICTIMIZING that child. That's the difference.

What if it were an old picture of you as a toddler, getting molested by a cretinous neighbor? Would that be "OK" from a moral perspective, absent any specific 'depiction' law forbidding it?

[hunter]

250. If there are any pictures, I don't know about it.

Nobody is looking at me funny, like "wow, you're the sad little boy in those pictures...," so I'm not a victim.

I've never repressed memories, even traumatic ones, but if I did, and I knew pictures of me were being passed around in the sewers of the internet, I'm not sure how I'd feel about it.

Who knows? Maybe I'd hand them over to Bernie Ward so he could get himself into a chat room for research. Would that make me a criminal? That'd be just great -- traumatized once by my abuser, and again by the justice system.

I've got plenty of pictures of myself naked as a kid. Our family was pretty causual about nudity. The customs probably arise from the Danish side of our family. As a kid I even saw my great grandmother naked a couple of times. If there was water to swim in somebody was always jumping in naked, especially if there was nobody around who cared -- in most cases that would be the Mormons.

Anyways, if some poor weirdo is masturbating over naked pictures from my childhood, I feel sorta sorry for him.

If I'd been sexually abused sometime in my childhood, the greater trauma would be in the original abuse, I suspect, and not so much in the pictures. I can replay traumas quite vividly in my head, and I don't need pictures to dredge up bad memories.

The nightmares would only stop when I could deal with the memories in my head, not when all the pictures were gone. At least that's the way it's always worked for other, non-sexual, traumas in my life.

[MADem]

252. And because YOU feel this way, EVERYONE feels this way. What a profound absence of

empathy and morality you seem to possess.

I doubt you have an album or film of you being raped by the pervert down the block, though, do you? You might not feel so sanguine if you knew those were being passed around.

And plenty of youngsters are older than toddlers when they are abused. That doesn't make the crime any more or less horrific. And they remember, too. It's why the Catholic Church in America is broke, nowadays.

You should watch a few of the documentaries about that business; how it affected the children, now adults, who were abused by authority figures that they trusted. It wasn't funny. It's not a subject to treat cavalierly, as you are doing.

Naked pictures on the bear rug or in the tub or the wading pool aren't the problem, here. You're being deliberately obtuse if you aver that they are.

Like I said, we're done. You don't get it--you don't care to get it.

[hunter]

261. I get you just fine, thank you.

You are coming in loud and clear.

But the fact that people get hurt by sexual predators is not good invitation for the wholesale violation of civil rights.

I am certain the Bush administration doesn't give a damn about traumatized children, otherwise they wouldn't be killing and maiming so many of them in Iraq.

But they would like very much to exert tighter control of the internet for strictly political reasons. The crackdown on child pornography is just one of the means they are using to accomplish this. The software, hardware, and legals tools they are building to limit the transfer of child pornography are quickly adapted to offensive use, in violation of our rights as U.S. citizens.

If child pornography is indeed a serious concern of yours, either because you or a member of your family were abused, that is a horrible thing. I hope it is something you can recover from, although in so many cases, the victims of child sexual abuse never do recover, and they are haunted their entire lives.

I have experienced the devastation first hand, as the friend of someone who was abused, and I was overjoyed when her abuser died. If we'd thought we could have gotten away with it, we might have stolen his corpse and left it off to rot at the landfill; the situation called for that kind of catharsis.

But I'm not going to join this current parade of right wing crusaders because I refuse to be a tool spreading fear for this very corrupt administration.

All sorts of hideous things happen to innocent people, and childhood sexual abuse is only one of those things. Protection from perverts hiding deep within their closets, who have never abused a child and never will, should not be accomplished at the expense of our civil rights.

If I happened to find documents and photographs implicating a government for high treason and crimes against humanity, I would want to disseminate them widely without fear that they would be intercepted by the machinery purportedly created to fight the spread of child pornography.

I call bullshit on this whole sorry circus, and I'll probably stick with that assessment no matter how it turns out. Crap begets crap, and it's a sorry thing indeed when people who so obviously don't care about innocent children use an issue like child sexual abuse for their own political advantage.

[MADem]

274. Why do you have to assume that one has a personal dog in the fight to give a shit about this matter?

I don't, but your presumtion that this must be the reason is evidence of your pisspoor thought process.

And Bush has nothing to do with this business, either, no matter how much you keep dragging him into this.

A grand jury indicted this guy, not Bush. You keep forgetting that. No one put a gun to his head and FORCED him to enter a chat room and PROVIDE images.

Every time a child's image is shopped about, it revictimizes the child, and, even if you don't happen to like it or believe it, it increases the probability that another child might be harmed in future.

I think people who victimize little kids are fucking scum. And I think people who find this behavior to be "not a big deal" or try to make excuses for it in "political motivation" pretty pathetic, unsavory, and disgusting.

I call bullshit on your whole weakass justifications, and despite the fact that I find your arguments pretty psychotic and devoid of humanity, I don't wish the misery of those children or their families on you, because I actually have an ethical core.

[hunter]

286. You are dancing for them that want you to dance.

Wouldn't you rather find a practical, enforceable solution that protects our children?

What we've got now isn't working. The people running the show at the Justice Department don't know what they are doing... or if they do, then they are rotten. Maybe they want another failed war, just like the war on drugs, just like the war on terror.

Read my other posts. Some of them are hastily written shotgun rants, yes I do that, but I dug through a lot of stuff last night, and I came away with the conclusion that the Justice Department doesn't have a lot to show for all the investment they've made.

The flood of child pornography on the internet is pretty much unabated. It's just harder and riskier to find, but it doesn't deter the pedophiles, and most of them remain invisible.

[MADem]

288. You're mitigating the trading of images of kids being abused. That's sick.

And you're trying to make it a POLITICAL issue, too. That's doubly sick.

And you're trying to 'equate' it with the war on drugs or the war on terror.

That's just bullshit.

Because "the flood of child pornography on the internet is pretty much unabated" well, WHAT? Give up? Not even try to combat it?

:eyes:

These arguments are incredible.

[hunter]

289. What's your plan?

What we've got now doesn't work.

And how is suffering sexual abuse so much worse than other sorts of abuse?

Say you got two rotten drug addicted step-dads abusing two kids, one sexually, one physically. Both kids grow up with psychological scars and physical scars that can never be repaired, only survived.

There's another kid forever scarred by some anti-terrorist action that went wrong in Afghanistan.

Which situation is worse?

There, you've got the war on drugs, the war on pedophilia, and the war on terror.

Tell me how they are different, how one harm is somehow worse than the others? What's the hierarchy of evil here?

As is true for many things, it is the secrecy here that maims and kills. The more oppresive and unjust the punishment for a crime, the greater the secrecy will be. Small evils fester in places devoid of light to become greater evils.

If looking at child porn on the internet was seen a simple psychological problem, of similar shame as being an alcoholic, we could deal with the problem out in the open, before it becomes something worse. We could keep people with such problems out of jobs and situations that involve children, much as we limit the driving priviliges of people who have been caught driving drunk.

When we allow politicians to manipulate us by our emotions, most especially our hatred for some group of people, we open the doors to tyrany.

[MADem]

291. My plan is to stop listening to your bullshit, frankly. You keep trying to suggest that

child victimization and abuse 'isn't so bad' and sorry, that makes me wonder about you. And not in a nice way, either.

It's not a question of "Is this bullshit scenario worse than THAT bullshit scenario." Child molestation and child sexual abuse, trading in images of the same, all are illegal. They are felony crimes.

You keep trying to ameliorate them, with bullshit 'what-if' scenarios and claims of poltical persecution, anything other than confronting the simple fact that it is an horrific crime. I find that off-putting.

It ain't drunk driving, no matter how much you try to liken the two.

Ugh.

[hunter]

293. Drunk driving kills and maims lots of kids. So does war, so do drugs.

Horrible things, all of them.

Your "wondering about" me doesn't bother me at all.

I wear a rainbow flag here, and God Forbid, I think laws are malleable things, mere human creations.

I also recognize pedophiles as human beings in spite of their vile behaviors. Guess what, I think murderers are human beings too.

Care to debate me on immigration issues? I here the same stupid argument there. But they are here illegally!

Big fucking deal. The law isn't working, so change it. Thats what our representatives are supposed to do, make laws that work, and get rid of the ones that don't.

In his bio Oosterbaan goes on about how his office "...has had a major impact on federal policy, legislation and prosecutions in the areas of child exploitation and obscenity."

Yeah, he has. In the area of internet pornography his "impact" has made the problems worse.

Why would you defend a policy that does not work? Or do you think his policies have worked? Why? From my vantage point I have seen it disappear from surface streams, but the underground rivers of it have increased in volume.

Sometimes emotional responses to a problem are useful, often they are not. Child pornography is horrible, the people who make and distribute it are rotten. I agree with that. Now what?

To insinuate that I am somehow "trying to ameliorate them" ("them" being the crimes of the child pornographers I suppose) is quite frankly rude, but unimportant to the arguments I am presenting here.

What's your argument?

[Caoimhe]

230. My heart is so heavy right now

I tuned in to Godtalk this morning, and after the beautiful bagpipes of Amazing Grace I was shocked to hear a guest host say that Bernie was gone and "we won't be talking about it" but to look at KGO's website for an official statement. I rushed onto the computer to find out what the hell. I've been listening to Bernie Ward and Ray Taliafero for what seems like my entire adult life. Bernie is one of my favorite public personalities. It doesn't matter how bad a day I've had, he always makes me laugh. He always has (had?) thoughtful topics and kept on top of current events. He's been dead right about so many things, it's almost like listening to a sage. His children are amazingly bright and driven souls and he is their greatest cheerleader. His former producer Margot McGowan was also a good friend of his and he actively lobbied on her behalf to get her her own show, but it didn't work out as the audience thought she sounded too "valley girl". He was disappointed in the reaction but he moved on.

I feel like a best friend is gone from my life. I am disturbed by all the comments from posters here who have obviously never listened to him, call him a "little known" radio host. You haven't a clue. Like others have said, KGO reaches an amazingly large area after dark, which is the only reason I, a teenager in a rural Oregon coastal town, was able to first hear him. I used to tuck my radio in bed with me at night...so my right wing parents couldn't hear it... and listen to Bernie and Ray as they blasted at the false "morality" of the right wing.

If anything this shows me how terribly quick people are (myself included) to believe someone is guilty of what they are charged with. In my heart I don't think Bernie would do this, and I will not believe it until the day I hear he is convicted. I have my doubts that day will come.

Bernie and his family are in my thoughts and prayers. A bright star in my sky is now gone. Even if this is tossed out, he will be forever branded.. and countless people will never hear the brilliance of Bernie as he dissects PNAC or asks for donations to the Thanksgiving charities, describing in such detail the plight of the homeless, the less advantaged and those who are grateful just to be allowed to keep their cardboard box home in the same place two nights in a row. I thought I'd grow old listening to Bernie. Here's hoping there is still some chance of that, however small.

[Garbo 2004]

245. Problem is Ward thru reps admits to "accessing & sharing" kid porn online. Why he did is an issue

for discussion. He/his representatives say it was for research rather than purient purposes and that it "technically" violated the law.

But the law evidently doesn't allow for exceptions based on intent. The prosecution doesn't have to prove intent, just the activity itself which is illegal (and which Ward apparently admits to).

So based on his attorney's and agent's statements to the media to date, yes Bernie did it. His attorney may argue that it was for research purposes only, but that Bernie did "access and share" child porn online at this point does not appear to be in question.

[Caoimhe]

267. and therefor and therein i scream WITCH HUNT

Say what you want, what you believe. Bernie is not a man who sat around stroking himself to child prOn. It doesn't compute. Like I said, I've listened to Bernie for several decades. The man loves his kids, hates injustice, and this is so beyond what he represents it makes me sick. I will continue to believe in his innocence until proven guilty (gosh what a friggin concept these days).

[Bozita]

243. Please take a look at this! ... Is the prosecutor one of the political hires in a career position?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3095810


from today's LA Times:

But (Carol) Lam said the mass firings did bring some positive changes, focusing attention on some of the other worsening problems at the department, such as widespread and dubious hiring practices.

She remains deeply concerned about the effect of what appeared to be long-term plans to fill career positions in the department with political appointees.

"That is going to take a long time to fix," she said in an interview. "It calls into question not only who was hired, but who should have been hired but wasn't."

more at http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-usattys9dec09,0,7178379,full.story?coll=la-home-center

[hunter]

247. That would be a damn righteous Christmas present for this to blow up in their faces.

The Bush Justice department is full of turds.

[MADem]

254. I don't recognize the name of the prosecutor, but the head of the

Exploitation Section has been in government for almost two decades. He's a Bush I appointee, and performed well under Clinton. It's no one named in your article, there--his name is on the indictment, though.

[BrotherBuzz]

256. Kevin Ryan was the exception, he was a Bushbot but was fired for poor performance

The Los Angeles Times reported on March 22, 2007, that Ryan was a "loyal Bush supporter" and that the Justice Department fired him primarily out of concern that his poor performance could cause a public relations problem. The Times reported that Ryan's problems in office were "well documented in legal newspapers" but that "Justice officials wanted to keep Ryan on, even as they plotted the firings of other U.S. attorneys." Publicly released emails between Justice Department officials suggest that they reluctantly added him to the list of attorneys to be fired due to a Federal judge's threat to obtain and potentially release copies of his "blistering" negative evaluations

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_V._Ryan_(attorney)


Here's another scenario to think about:

There may have been a possible conflict of interest in the case during Ryan's tenure because both Ryan and Ward attended the same Catholic high school. Ryan shelved the case because it wasn't real strong, and was able to shield Bernie in the process; his loyalty to St. Ignatius was stronger than his loyalty to Bush.

[Garbo 2004]

259. Reportedly Ryan recused himself and his office from the case, turning it over to DOJ DC. n/t

[BrotherBuzz]

260. Cool, Ryan did the correct thing

Now the question is, why did they wait so long for the indictment? :shrug:

[Garbo 2004]

262. According to Weinberg, they were trying to dissuade DOJ from prosecuting based on the research

defense. Just speculation on my part that maybe they even provided DOJ with some evidence that Bernie was researching for a book as he says. It appears that some sort of "negotiation" may have been going on during that time, based on Weinberg's comments.

This bit from Matier & Ross seems to support that some sort of negotiation was in process for that time, FWIW:

Radio waves: Federal prosecutors pursuing a child pornography case against liberal KGO radio talk host Bernie Ward were pressuring him as far back as a year and a half ago to accept a plea deal that would have sent him to prison for five years, according to knowledgeable sources.

At one point, the feds gave him a week to think it over and said the offer would be off the table after that.

"He was very upset," recounted one confidante, who asked not to be named.

Ward says he was only researching a book when he downloaded child-porn images in December 2004 and transmitted them to a woman with whom he had been communicating on a chat line. And after conversations with his lawyers, Ward rejected the plea deal - and Thursday, he was indicted. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/12/09/BAOLTQJO6.DTL

[MADem]

275. The problem with his scenario is that is doesn't match the indictment.

Now, who knows--the indictment could be wrong. But they've had a considerable amount of time to get it right, haven't they?

The indictment has him PROVIDING images in December, and downloading AND providing again in January.

Where did he get the images he provided in December, I wonder?

[hunter]

278. From the Justice Department?

:shrug:

Opened his e-mail and there they were. Merry Christmas, Bernie!

But why speculate?

[MADem]

281. He'd be off the hook in that case, then.

You're flailing for any old excuse, I see.

That would be entrapment.

If he received them that way, too, from someone other than "The Bush Justice Department" :eyes: there'd be a receipt charge in the indictment preceding the 'providing' charge in December.

Keep 'speculating,' there, Perry Mason!

[hunter]

285. Come now, it doesn't have to say "From: Andrew Oosterbaan"

I'm not trying to pin this on the evil Bush Administration the way you think I am.

Yeah, we can speculate that they are evil, and took down Bernie Ward, and that's sort of fun actually, but in the larger picture this is just another one of those "war on..." issues, like the war on drugs or the war on terror, that fail miserably.

And yep, I did my research.

Mr. Oosterbaan doesn't have a lot of successes in his battle against child pornography on the internet. He catches a few bad guys and parades them around, and he says appeasing things to the right wing freak political base, but I don't see any evidence that he knows what he is doing or that he has any comprehensive plan to reduce the volume of internet child pornography.

The Bernie Ward case looks a lot like some guys trying to get some face time before the last of the Bush Administration sinks beneath the waves.

Personally I hope the next administration tosses the Bush Justice Department out on the streets. We need a new approach, one that doesn't make investigating child pornography even more difficult than it already is.

The fact is that the guys trading these images are very well motivated to learn everything there is about the workings of the internet. The human sex drive is a powerful force, even when it's twisted into something so ugly as child pornography. These guys don't care if one of their guys is punished, it just makes them more wary. They learn how to hide. They encrypt their messages, and they do everything in an anonymous and untraceable fashion, and they do it outside U.S. jurisdiction.

The United States government does not posses enough computing power to go after encrypted child pornography streams. The United States doesn't even have enough computing power to sort out everything they would like to for national defense.

So what do you do?

Throwing around mental images of kids being abused, and punishing the few clueless twits you catch, simply doesn't cut it.

You've got to put your emotions aside and come up with something that works.

Who knows, maybe you can put the guys who wouldn't dare come out of their closets on a list of people who are not allowed to be alone with kids, and keep very close watch of them. Maybe you go ahead and let them trade their foul fictions and victimless photoshops on open channels, to their deviant hearts' content. That way when something new comes down the pipes, it will be visible, unencrypted, and sourced. Then investigators will be able to bring the hammer down quickly, and maybe pluck the victims out of terrible situations before any more harm is done.

This new notion of "revictimization," as Oosterbaan uses it -- the idea that pictures traded by anonymous and well hidden people do actual harm is very degrading of the term because there are many victims of sexual assault who are truly revictimized, both physically and mentally. There can be no comfort offered for pictures that are already on the internet, for their is no way to eliminate every last copy, and there will always be users of child pornography who have not been caught.

[MADem]

287. Osterbaan, who is a CAREERIST, did sign the indictment. If you read it.

Along with the foreperson AND the prosecutor.

You seem to know an awful lot about how this shit works, and what Mr. Ward did and didn't do. For all you know, he might have been encrypting AND chatting in a chatroom with a .ru homebase.

None of those particulars are in the indictment. All I know is what is in the indictment, and the indictment begs for explanation.

Revictimization isn't a new notion, either. Except maybe to you. It existed well before Bush ever took office.

[hunter]

290. It's not a new notion, but the application here is.

And yes, they are careerists, and they are worried about their careers. As is said, "everything Bush touches turns to shit," including careers in the Justice Department

There are going to be some big shakeups come January 2009.

Oosterbaan has been bumbling through since he took this job. True he's not the pig Bruce Taylor would have been (a guy who works for immigration now :eyes: ) but that's setting the bar pretty low.

[MADem]

292. He has not. That's bull. NT

[hunter]

294. Has not? What?

I'd love to trace the origin of "revictimization" as it relates to pictures on the internet entirely unknown to the victim or any party related to the victim.

The internet is not that old. It is my understanding that the word previously refered to a more direct sort of physical or psychological interaction between the victim and the person who abused or assaulted them.

[kamtsa]

253. Bernie left the priesthood but the priesthood did not leave Bernie.

[robcon]

266. How does the "research defense"offer any defense whatsoever?

If he transmitted child porn pictures, he's guilty, IMO. If he didn't, he's innocent.

The "research defense" could (and probably should) affect his sentence, but not his guilt or innocence, IMO.

[CountAllVotes]

295. Support Bernie Ward website up and running!!

http://home.comcast.net/~supportbernieward/site/?/home/

The website is up and running. Please click on the link above or paste it into your browser.

We will update this site regularly to keep you informed about Bernie's case.

:dem: :kick: !!

[hunter]

297. Thanks. The more I research I do, the worse it looks for the Justice Department.

This is looking like another "Heck of a job Brownie" moment for the Bush Administration.

I'm giving Bernie the benefit of the doubt here.

The Bush administration is going down like the Titanic, and this case seems to have been tossed out onto the water as a life raft by prosecutors who hope some GOP sugar daddy will sail by and rescue them when their doomed ship of fools sinks beneath the waves a year from now.

The guilt or innocence of Bernie Ward is largely irrelevant to them, they shut him down when they first notified them he'd been caught in their net.

But so far they have done very little to stop the flood of child pornography on the internet because they are either grossly incompetent, or they have some ulterior motive. They've put curtains over the surface streams of child porn, and made soothing noises to the frothing at the mouth sexual purity perverts of the right wing, but all they've really accomplished in their tenure is to make the problems of investigating child porn on the internet much, much more difficult for law enforcement officials everywhere.

I'm not sure if it's malfeasance or the simple law of unintended consequences --For every problem there is a simple and obvious solution that will only make the problem worse-- but it's very clear that what is happening to Bernie Ward is unjust, whatever the actual situation may be.

P.S. If anyone wants to make scurrilous accusations that I am somehow supporting pedophiles (you know, hunter is known to be Catholic, and that rainbow flag of his sure is suggestive, don't you think, wink, wink... ) well you can just sit back, think about naked aluminum statues or whatever else it is you find disturbing yet somehow enticing, and go drool into your keyboard some more. I defend free speech on the internet.



photo credit: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/article?o=1&f=/g/a/2002/01/30/notes013002.DTL

[CountAllVotes]

301. check out the Peter B. Collins show from 12/10/07

here is the link:

http://server4.whiterosesociety.org/content/collins/CollinsShow-(10-12-2007).mp3

About 1-1/2 hrs. into this program begins an in-depth discussion about Bernie Ward and the entire situation and what happened. :thumbsup:

SAVE BERNIE WARD! We need our "Lion of the Left"!!

Please DONATE if you can!! Thank you!! :D

:kick:

[hunter]

302. Your link doesn't work directly (DU parsing problem)

But I grabbed it by going to http://whiterosesociety.org/Collins.html and scrolling down to the December 10, 2007 show.

[CountAllVotes]

303. thanks for fixing that!

Thank you and please EVERYONE PLEASE LISTEN!

:kick:

[Garbo 2004]

304. Unless today's show was a repeat, Collins was talking about it today too.

I only caught a bit toward the end of the 2nd hour today.

[Lil]

307. There is a petition on the site. ["If you signed before the 14th. . .

http://home.comcast.net/~supportbernieward/site/?/home/
"If you signed the petition prior to 12/14/2007, please sign again. There was a glich in the program and signatures were not recorded."

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/33/justice-for-bernie-ward

WE DEMAND JUSTICE FOR BERNIE WARD

Drop the charges and put Bernie Ward back on the air

The Department of Justice does not dispute Bernie's explanation of how and why he pulled about 30 images of child pornography from various online sources and transmitted one image via e-mail to a person representing herself as an adult woman. The DOJ also says it understands that Bernie, like millions of Americans, was ignorant of the laws that govern Internet child pornography. Essentially, the law states, if you open a file deliberately, you are guilty of a crime.


However, the DOJ does not care about intent or mitigating circumstances anymore than it cares about what kind of man Bernie Ward really is. It is not interested in handing out a punishment that truly fits the crime.

The federal government's investigation of Bernie Ward has lasted three years. It began with the seizure of every computer in his family's home and has now culminated in an indictment on multiple charges of possession and transmission of child pornography. In those three years, in which nothing more than those original images have been discovered, the government has allowed Bernie unfettered access to e-mail and the Internet and to children in his daily work and activities.

Three years. What does that say? If the Justice Department honestly believed it had a child predator on its hands, does anyone doubt that it would have taken decisive steps to remove that person from society?

The United States government knows Bernie Ward is not a child predator or pornographer. It knows that fewer than three dozen images in an e-mail kill file and one e-mailed image do not remotely fit the modus operandi of a pedophile or child pornographer. Nevertheless, the government also knows that the mere accusation of such serious crimes is enough to ruin a person%u2019s professional and social standing and destroy his life forever. It is for this reason that Bernie Ward and his family have chosen to fight the U.S. Attorney's plan to brand him as a child predator, send him to federal prison for five years and consign him for the rest of his life to carry the stigma of a registered sex offender.

Five years or more behind bars, the financial destruction of his family and a reputation than can never be resurrected is neither proportional nor just.

WE DEMAND JUSTICE FOR BERNIE WARD

[robcon]

310. I think justice for Ward would be jailtime, if the allegations are true.

What lapse of judgment and morality does it take to email child pornography to others? A serious lapse, IMO.

He's not a threat to do it again (unlike, IMO, most other child pornographers) but what he seems to have done is clearly and unequivocally illegal and evil.

[Garbo 2004]

305. Was Bernie trying to "entrap" people? A possibility based on attny's comments. ABC news article:

Ward's lawyer told ABC News that Ward e-mailed the illicit images, but only as part of his research into a book about what he believed to be the hypocrisy of the religious right. Though it is illegal even for journalists to trade or possess child pornography as part of their work, Ward's attorneys argue that there should be some leeway for legitimate research into the subject.

Jeanette Boudreau, Ward's business attorney, said Ward - described on his Web site as "unabashedly liberal" - told her he wanted to show that some Republicans and members of the religious right are public moralists who don't practice what they preach in the privacy of their homes. Ward and prosecutors from the Department of Justice declined to comment on the case.

"He tried to have a dialogue with people and see what he could talk them into saying and agreeing to," she said. "He lost track of himself and didn't stop and think about what he was doing."

...Boudreau said Ward, a married father of four, e-mailed the images, but did not store them on his hard drive or collect them. She said she was told that the case originated when a person with whom Ward had been e-mailing about child pornography called the police. http://www.abcnews.go.com/print?id=3980105

Based on his attorney's comments it sounds as if Bernie was trying to "sting" for his own purposes whoever he was "dialoging" with (presumably RWingers of some sort) and one of them reported him. If this is so, then it would appear Bernie was trying to "entrap" people and wound up caught in his own trap.

[hunter]

306. Curiouser and curiouser...

... Oosterbaan would not comment on the case, but said that he has never heard a journalist describe a scenario in which the journalist needed to view child pornography.

"The images are pretty horrific stuff," he said. "Every one of these victims says that the worst part is that the images will never go away. They are distributed so widely, and it's hard to imagine how terrible it would be to know that your image is out there and being traded."

Oosterbaan has got that right, the images never go away.

And he can't do a damned thing about that. But I guess he can go out and slap people around.

Everything I read about Oosterbaan makes me respect him less. He's just a self righteous and pompous fellow walking around with a big club. He doesn't seem to be much of a problem solver.

[fascisthunter]

308. Question for a Legal Mind:

Why would "The specifics of the allegations against Ward remain under seal."?

http://www.nbc11.com/news/14793696/detail.html?rss=bay&psp=news

[Garbo 2004]

309. That's a Dec 6th article. The indictment was unsealed and made public Dec 7. n/t

[fascisthunter]

311. Ahh... thank You (nt)

[fedsron2us]

312. This one of those cases where I think I prefer the UK and Canada's sub judice law

rather than the US First Amendment right to Free Speech. Ill informed public discussion of a case before the facts are considered in court surely prejudices the accused's right to a fair trial