Ramsey Orta, who filmed the NYPD chokehold that resulted in a Eric Garner’s death, was arrested Saturday on gun charges, and his family thinks the NYPD is punishing him for the video.
Police say officers saw Orta stick a handgun into the waistband of his friend as they were leaving a “known drug prone location” on Staten Island Saturday night — just one day after the city medical examiner ruled Garner’s death a homicide.
Orta’s family told the press that the cops had been following him, even parking outside of his house in wait. Orta’s wife Chrissie Ortiz said he phoned her during the incident. “He called me and said, ‘babe, hurry up and come over here, they’re trying to pin something on me,’” she said.
“They park across the street, they follow him,” Ortiz said. “It’s obvious. Once they rule this a homicide, now you all of a sudden find something on him? Come on, let’s be realistic. Even the dumbest criminal would know not to be doing something like that outside. So the whole story doesn’t fit at all.”
It’s easy being called an activist when it’s for the right reason, and when you’re a part of an administration whose main goal is working for the people, being called an activist is a good thing.
Eric Holder recognized this fact, and he is embracing being called an activist “1000 percent.”
“If you want to call me an activist attorney general, I will proudly accept that label,” Holder told journalist Juan Williams in an interview published at The Hill.
“Any attorney general who is not an activist is not doing his or her job,” he continued, adding that “the responsibility of the attorney general is to change things [and] bring us closer to the ideals expressed in our founding documents.”
Asked later about his response to critics who claim that the Justice Department houses an activist civil rights division and an activist chief, Holder said “I agree with you 1000 percent and [I am] proud of it.”
If I was a conspiracy theorist, which I am decidedly not, I would posit that the Democrats maneuvered the Watergate scandal to end right smack in the middle of the summer doldrums so that it wouldn’t be drowned out by other political news. The truth is that Richard Nixon was enough to keep the story in the news for years after he resigned, so compelling a figure was he that he is still both loved as a foreign policy practitioner and loathed as a petty, selfish democratic tyrant.
The fortieth anniversary of his resignation on August 9 will find the country still in a state of political gridlock with both parties blaming the other for starting and perpetuating the problem. Television programs this week will look back on Nixon and his summer of discontent using newly released White House tapes and interviews with people who were there, and who now speak with more candor. There are a couple of new books about Watergate. The paradox is that as much as we think we know about the scandal, there is still more to learn. More people will talk. Papers stashed away with strict orders not to open them until the owner dies will reveal more. Perhaps the digital revolution will uncover the 18 and a half minute gap that has tantalized historians for forty years. These are tasty possibilities.
Watergate summer, though, can also be used as the first year of our present political troubles. Many Republicans have never forgiven Democrats for making the Watergate scandal more than what they thought it was; a minor political issue relating to the election of 1972 and nothing more. Democrats have blamed Republicans for using the Nixonian campaign manual for splitting the country and playing on white’s fears of minorities and social programs that take money from middle class Americans and redistribute it to the poor.
It gets deeper. Robert Bork was denied a seat on the Supreme Court in part because he played a role in the Saturday Night Massacre by firing Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox. From this point on, Supreme Court nominees have faced blistering questions about every aspect of their lives while giving stoic non-answers in reply. Democrats threatened to consider impeaching Ronald Reagan over the Iran-Contra scandal. Republicans made good on their promise by impeaching Bill Clinton. The current House of Representatives is suing the president over perceived unconstitutional actions. Gerrymandered seats protect representatives of both parties from having to make tough policy decisions.
Watergate and the political climate it engendered has not helped the United States. Congress did pass some reforms, but many of them have been overturned by the Supreme Court, especially the ones having to do with the corrosive influence of unregulated money in the political system. And in foreign policy, Nixon’s actions helped open the door for more globalization, but we have no blueprint for a world in which the United States plays a less forceful role in international affairs.
More than half of all Americans living today were born after the Watergate scandal. That’s good news because although we do need to remember and learn from the past, we also need to purge the emotion from our system. Political cultures tend to do better in the generation after a traumatic event has occurred. Ours will be no different.
Innocent women and children are being slaughtered in Gaza, some of them killed when Israeli bombs dropped on their schools, hospitals and UN sanctioned “safe zones.” But if you listened to Rick Perry, there is no problem here. War is war and innocent people die!
In an appearance on CNN, host Candy Crowley asked Perry,“When you look at 1,700-plus civilian deaths in Gaza — the large majority of which are civilians we are told — what is your thought about that, what is your reaction to that?”
Without any form of emotion, the gun tooting Republican governor from Texas responded;
“War is a horrible thing. There are individuals who lose their lives in war.”
“But when we have a fairly good understanding that Hamas is actually using their citizens as shields, at that particular point in time, it loses a lot of the the power, if you will, from my perspective. When you look back at Hamas’ statements that they will not be satisfied until Israel is wiped off the face of the Earth, then you start understanding the mentality a little bit better of a terrorist organization like Hamas.”
Here in America, crazy Republicans have gone into Churches to disrupt services, and in Dr. Tiller’s case, a crazy Republican even killed the man while he worshiped in Church because he didn’t share their ideology. They’re apparently accustomed to these safe zones being attacked, so Perry’s statement come as no surprise.
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