"They Fit In Just Fine...They Are Decent People

Hearing postponed for blogger accused of threats


NEWARK, N.J. (AP) — A power failure has postponed a bail hearing for a New Jersey blogger charged with threatening three federal judges in Chicago.

Harold "Hal" Turner was to have appeared in federal court Tuesday. But that was canceled after a blown transformer cut power to parts of downtown Newark.

A new date has not been set.

The northern New Jersey resident was denied bail last week after he was arrested and charged with threatening to assault or murder the judges because they refused to overturn handgun bans.

Prosecutors say Turner wrote that the judges "deserve to be killed" and provided a map showing the Chicago courthouse where they work.

In a separate case, Turner has been charged with encouraging violence against two Connecticut lawmakers over controversial legislation.

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Tracing Xenophobic Internet Chatter to Its Roots in New Jersey Town
Jessica Hill/Associated Press

TO ORIGINAL SOURCE

LinkedinDiggFacebookMixxMySpaceYahoo! BuzzPermalinkBy KAREEM FAHIM and NATE SCHWEBER
Published: June 30, 2009
The words of Hal Turner, incendiary and provincial as they might seem, have echoed far beyond the small Internet radio studio in his home in North Bergen, N.J., where, until his arrest last week, a neighbor knew him to be cordial if frequently confrontational.

Once an aspiring politician, Mr. Turner has become a controversial blogger and Internet radio host who has attracted attention from civil rights monitoring groups for his anti-immigrant and anti-Semitic pronouncements, and from authorities in Connecticut, where he was charged earlier this month with inciting violence against state lawmakers.

In April, Mr. Turner was suspected of playing a role in briefly driving down bank stocks after he claimed to have been leaked the results of bank stress tests conducted by the Treasury Department.

Last week, Mr. Turner achieved a new level of notoriety after federal authorities charged him with threatening in blog posts to assault and murder three federal appeals court judges.

“These judges deserve to be killed,” Mr. Turner wrote on his Web site, turnerradionetwork.com, which has since been taken down. “Their blood will replenish the tree of liberty.” He also posted the names, photos, phone numbers and work addresses of the three judges.

Mr. Turner’s words, which will test the boundaries of free speech, have emerged from an unlikely place: a three-story brick building across from a car wash in North Bergen, where many of his neighbors are Hispanic. Federal agents arrested him there last week, finding three semiautomatic handguns and a shotgun, along with 350 rounds of ammunition.

At a hearing on Thursday, prosecutors said they would consent to letting Mr. Turner remain under house arrest after posting bail if he surrendered all his broadcasting equipment and Internet access. The police planned to monitor his home computers to ensure that he stayed off the Web. He would also have to submit to a mental health evaluation and not travel outside New Jersey and northern Illinois, where he is charged.

The judge, Michael A. Shipp, said: “Quite frankly, after reading all the information I’m concerned about the defendant’s threat to the community.”

John Turner, 44, Mr. Turner’s brother, said after the hearing that his brother’s arrest constituted an “abuse of power.” Another bail hearing is set for Tuesday afternoon.

On Monday, a note from Mr. Turner, apparently written in jail, was posted on his Web site. In it, he asked his supporters for money to pay a lawyer and to post bond.

“I’ve been jailed in protective custody on account of the U.S. marshals because I’m the only non-Hispanic white guy in the prison,” the note said. Visitors to his Web site are now directed to a blog run by his mother.

Mr. Turner has been broadcasting from his home since 2001. In an interview he gave to The Record of Hackensack in 2003, Mr. Turner, a former Marine, said that his turn from budding politician to firebrand Internet activist came a few years earlier after a decision by the Republican leadership in Hudson County to endorse a Hispanic woman over him to challenge Senator Robert Menendez, who was then in the House of Representatives.

“I had never judged people on their race, not prior to that point,” he said.

Frank Askin, a professor of constitutional law at Rutgers University, said statements as “obnoxious and offensive” as those attributed to Mr. Turner are still protected. “In order to convict him, the U.S. Supreme Court is going to have to overrule earlier doctrine,” he said. “I don’t think he can be convicted of incitement. People who listen to him have time to think.”

In the 2003 interview with The Record, Mr. Turner spoke well of the people of North Bergen, a town where Hispanics make up more than 60 percent of the population. “They fit in just fine,” he said. “They are decent people.” (In the same article, Mr. Turner referred to some residents of Los Angeles as “brown-skinned savages.”)

One of his neighbors recalled several run-ins with Mr. Turner. Roldan Flores, 44, a truck driver, said that while many of his exchanges with Mr. Turner were polite, the two had an argument more than a year ago. Mr. Flores said he had music blaring from his car stereo and Mr. Turner came outside and exchanged words with him. Later that evening, as Mr. Flores left his apartment, Mr. Turner emerged from his apartment across the hall at the same time with a pistol prominently displayed, stuffed down the front of his shorts with the handle protruding.

“Never did I know he had a gun until that altercation with him,” Mr. Flores said last week.

Mr. Flores said around the same time Mr. Turner hung a sign on a telephone pole near the front of the building which read, “No infestation, no immigration.” Mr. Flores said he tore the sign down with a tire iron and threw it in the trash.

White Firefighters Win In Court

TO ORIGINAL ARTICLE

White firefighters win Supreme Court appeal
By MARK SHERMAN, Associated Press Writer Mark Sherman, Associated Press Writer
47 mins ago

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court ruled Monday that white firefighters in New Haven, Conn., were unfairly denied promotions because of their race, reversing a decision that high court nominee Sonia Sotomayor endorsed as an appeals court judge.

The ruling could alter employment practices nationwide and make it harder to prove discrimination when there is no evidence it was intentional.

New Haven was wrong to scrap a promotion exam because no African-Americans and only two Hispanic firefighters were likely to be made lieutenants or captains based on the results, the court said Monday in a 5-4 decision. The city said that it had acted to avoid a lawsuit from minorities.

The ruling could give Sotomayor's critics fresh ammunition two weeks before her Senate confirmation hearing. Conservatives say it shows she is a judicial activist who lets her own feelings color her decisions. On the other hand, liberal allies say her stance in the case demonstrates her restraint and unwillingness to go beyond established precedents.

Coincidentally, the court may have given a boost to calls for quick action on her nomination.

The court said it will return Sept. 9 to hear a second round of arguments in a campaign finance case, and with Justice David Souter retiring there would be only eight justices unless Sotomayor has been confirmed by then.

In Monday's ruling, Justice Anthony Kennedy said, "Fear of litigation alone cannot justify an employer's reliance on race to the detriment of individuals who passed the examinations and qualified for promotions." He was joined in the majority by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

In dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said the white firefighters "understandably attract this court's sympathy. But they had no vested right to promotion. Nor have other persons received promotions in preference to them."

Justices Souter, Stephen Breyer and John Paul Stevens signed onto Ginsburg's dissent, which she read aloud in court Monday. Speaking dismissively of the majority opinion, she predicted the court's ruling "will not have staying power."

Kennedy's opinion made only passing reference to the work of Sotomayor and the other two judges on the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals who upheld a lower court ruling in favor of New Haven.

But the appellate judges have been criticized for producing a cursory opinion that failed to deal with "indisputably complex and far from well-settled" questions, in the words of another appeals court judge, Sotomayor mentor Jose Cabranes.

"This perfunctory disposition rests uneasily with the weighty issues presented by this appeal," Cabranes said, in a dissent from the full 2nd Circuit's decision not to hear the case.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said Sotomayor should not be criticized for the unsigned appeals court decision, which he asserted she did not write. "Judge Sotomayor and the lower court panel did what judges are supposed to do, they followed precedent," said the Vermont Democrat who will preside over Sotomayor's confirmation hearings next month.

Leahy also called the high court decision "cramped" and wrong.

In New Haven, Nancy Ricci, whose son, Frank, was the lead plaintiff on the lawsuit, carried a large cake decorated with red, white and blue frosting into the law office where the firefighters were celebrating their victory.

The ruling is "a sign that individual achievement should not take a back seat to race or ethnicity," said Karen Torre, the firefighters' attorney. "I think the import of the decision is that cities cannot bow to politics and pressure and lobbying by special interest groups or act to achieve racial quotas."

At a press conference on the steps of city hall in New Haven, firefighter Frank Ricci said the ruling showed that "if you work hard, you can succeed in America."

Monday's decision has its origins in New Haven's need to fill vacancies for lieutenants and captains in its fire department. It hired an outside firm to design a test, which was given to 77 candidates for lieutenant and 41 candidates for captain.

Fifty-six firefighters passed the exams, including 41 whites, nine blacks and six Hispanics. But of those, only 17 whites and two Hispanics could expect promotion.

The city eventually decided not to use the exam to determine promotions. It said it acted because it might have been vulnerable to claims that the exam had a "disparate impact" on minorities in violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The white firefighters said the decision violated the same law's prohibition on intentional discrimination. The lawsuit was filed by 20 white plaintiffs, including one man who is both white and Hispanic.

Kennedy said an employer needs a "strong basis in evidence" to believe it will be held liable in a disparate impact lawsuit. New Haven had no such evidence, he said.

The city declined to validate the test after it was given, a step that could have identified flaws or determined that there were no serious problems with it. In addition, city officials could not say what was wrong with the test, other than the racially skewed results.

"The city could be liable for disparate-impact discrimination only if the examinations were not job related" or the city failed to use a less discriminatory alternative, Kennedy said. "We conclude that there is no strong basis in evidence to establish that the test was deficient in either of these respects."

But Ginsburg said the court should have assessed "the starkly disparate results" of the exams against the backdrop of historical and ongoing inequality in the New Haven fire department. As of 2003, she said, only one of the city's 21 fire captains was African-American.

Until this decision, Ginsburg said, the civil rights law's prohibitions on intentional discrimination and disparate impact were complementary, both aimed at ending workplace discrimination.

"Today's decision sets these paired directives at odds," she said.

Metger Raided - Mahon Finally Arrested

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Icing On The Cake

North Bergen blogger ordered detained
Thursday, June 25, 2009
BY PETER J. SAMPSON
NorthJersey.com
STAFF WRITER

TO ORIGINAL STORY

Harold “Hal” Turner, the controversial internet radio host and blogger from North Bergen, was ordered detained Thursday by a federal magistrate on charges of threatening to kill three federal appeals court judges in Chicago for upholding a ban on handguns.

“I am concerned about the defendant’s dangerousness to the community,” said U.S. Magistrate Judge Michael A. Shipp during a hearing in Newark a day after Turner’s arrest by the FBI.

The government and Turner’s attorney, Michael Orozco, offered the judge a bail package that included confining Turner to his Paterson Plank Road apartment, restricting his access to the Internet, and having his mother post her Pennsylvania home as collateral for a $200,000 bond.

But Shipp said he was not satisfied that the security for the bond had been sufficiently vetted by court personnel and rejected the bail package, telling Orozco he could reapply.

At the same time, the judge granted the government’s request to transfer Turner to Chicago for further proceedings in the case.

Wearing a grey T-shirt and blue jeans, his wrists and ankles locked in shackles, Turner, 47, appeared surprised when Assistant U.S. Attorney L. Judson Welle told the judge that his release would pose “a great danger” to the community.

Turner, who for years has pushed the limits of constitutionally protected speech, may have crossed that line in Internet postings June 2 and 3 allegedly threatening the judges in retaliation for their recent ruling upholding handgun bans in Chicago and a suburb.

The postings, in which Turner said the judges “deserved to be killed,” included their photographs, work address and a picture of the building where they work, Welle said.

Turner also made reference to a judge in the same district whose husband and mother were murdered in 2005, Welle said.

“Apparently, the 7th U.S. Circuit court didn’t get the hint after those killings. It appears another lesson is needed,” Turner allegedly wrote on his blog.

Killing the judges would “send a message” to other judges that they must “obey the constitution or die,” Welle said, referring to Turners’ postings.

During a search of Turner’s home, agents recovered three handguns, a shotgun and 350 rounds of ammunition, Welle told the judge. Orozco said the weapons are all licensed.

Turner, who bills his internet radio network as “the last bastion of true free speech” in the U.S. media, admitted to agents that he would be responsible if someone acted on his postings, the prosecutor said.

After the hearing, Orozco acknowledged that Turner has called for the murder of judges and lawmakers, among others, in the past, and that in the wake of the slayings of an abortion doctor and a guard at Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., the landscape appears to have changed.

“Clearly this is a First Amendment issue and whether he dances too close to the line is an issue to be determined by the courts,” Orozco said.

If convicted of threatening to assault or murder the judges, Turner faces up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
E-mail: sampson@northjersey.com







LINK TO THE CRIMINAL COMPLAINT

This is it...this is the "I told you so" that I have been waiting for. This is the icing on the cake.

In 2005, Judge Joan Lefkow entered her Chicago home to find her husband and elderly mother had been assassinated. The next day, racist shock-jock, Hal Turner, posted a picture of Judge Lefkow with the bold caption, "GOTCHA." Over the last four years, Turner has repeatedly told others on his website that the Judge's family was killed because of him:

"Do you know why those law enforcement agencies watch me so closely? Because they KNOW I hurt people; they just can;t prove it.

"THey KNOW homes and businesses have been fire bombed becuase of me;they just can;t prove it.

"They KNOW a federal judges family was killed in Chicago because of me;they just can't prove it." (Hal Turner, January, 2007)

Hal Turner fell silent in a Conneticut courtroom a couple of days ago as he stood before a judge on charges of inciting violence. His website fell silent today as he was arrested yesterday by the FBI.

It took four years of putting up with Hal Turner's threats and calls for violence. Four very long years - but now, maybe we can say:

GOTCHA!

New Blog In The Neighborhood

"Lunatic Fringe USA" looks to be a really promising blog. Their message:

Lunatic Fringe USA:
In the 1930's FDR coined the term "lunatic fringe" to describe the radical right which consisted of such groups and people as Radio Priest Father Coughlin, Preacher L.K. Smith, America Firsters,the Silver Shirts,Nazis,the KKK and many more.

In 2009 the Lunatic Fringe of the far right consists of people like Radio Host Rush Limbaugh, Preacher Pete Peters, Holocaust Deniers, Neo Confederate, Neo Nazis,the KKK and many more.

Lunatic Fringe USA uses news stories, personal experiences, pictures, audio, and humor to dispell the myths and dreams of the lunatic far right.

Lunatic Fringe USA will keep you informed of crimes and dangers from the radical right.

Check 'em out here

HAL TURNER MUM IN COURT

For someone whose mouth got him into so much trouble, it appears that Hal Turner, racist shock-jock out of New Jersey, didn't have much to say today at his arraignment in Conneticut. Maybe old dogs can learn new tricks.

TO ORIGINAL SOURCE

NJ Blogger Appears In Court
Harold Turner Faces Charge Of Inciting Violence Against State LawmakersHARTFORD, Conn. (AP) ― Click to enlarge1 of 1
Harold "Hal" Turner (File)
CBS 2

A New Jersey blogger accused of encouraging violence against Connecticut legislators told authorities he hoped nobody would "go off the deep end and do something terrible," but he added, "you never can tell," according to a police report released Monday.

A judge arraigned Harold "Hal" Turner in Hartford Superior Court on Monday on a felony charge of inciting injury to persons. Turner, who says his words are protected by free speech rights, did not enter a plea. He and his attorney declined to comment.

Earlier this month, the 47-year-old former radio talk show host urged his blog readers to "take up arms" against Connecticut lawmakers and suggested government officials should "obey the Constitution or die."

Turner, of North Bergen, N.J., was angry over legislation that would have given lay members of Roman Catholic churches more control over their parishes' finances. The bill, brought by state Sen. Andrew McDonald and Rep. Michael Lawlor, was withdrawn in March.

Turner promised readers he would release state officials' home addresses. He also wrote that Catholics should "put down this tyranny by force" and "I suspect we have enough bullets" to stop any prosecutors, police officers or court officials.

A Connecticut Capitol police officer said in the arrest warrant affidavit released Monday that Turner took responsibility for what he wrote in the June 2 posting.

"I did an article on it, and then posted some very terse commentary at the bottom," Turner told the officer the same day as the posting.

"It's certainly my intent to motivate the public to get involved in this, and certainly we hope that nobody's going to go off the deep end and do something terrible, but ... you never can tell," Turner said, according to the affidavit.

Police said the specific targets of Turner's comments were McDonald, Lawlor and Thomas Jones, an enforcement officer at the Office of State Ethics. Lawlor filed the police complaint, and McDonald and Jones told officers they were worried about their safety.

The ethics office has been investigating whether the Roman Catholic Diocese of Bridgeport should have registered as a lobbying group for its actions related to the parish finances bill and a rally at the Capitol on March 11. The diocese is suing the ethics office in federal court, citing free speech rights.

The crime Turner is charged with, inciting injury to persons or property, carries a maximum prison sentence of up to 10 years. His next court hearing is July 14.

Turner's views have drawn scrutiny before. Two years ago, police in New Jersey beefed up security for four state Supreme Court justices whose addresses Turner revealed "to show they can be gotten to." Turner released the information after the court ruled that gay couples were entitled to the same rights as married couples.

Mississippi Murders Not Going Away

Miss. killings under review

Feds investigating 1964 murders in Philadelphia

Jerry Mitchell
jmitchell@clarionledger.com

The Ku Klux Klan's killings of three civil rights workers in Mississippi that stunned a nation 45 years ago again are being investigated.

"This case is being actively reviewed by the Civil Rights Division and the FBI," Alejandro Miyar, a spokesman for the division, told The Clarion-Ledger. "Our goal in investigating this case is to lend our assistance to authorities in Mississippi so that they may make a determination whether sufficient evidence exists for a state prosecution."

Five suspects are still alive in the case, including reputed Klansman Billy Wayne Posey, who told Mississippi investigators there were "a lot of persons involved in the murders that did not go to jail."

The news comes as civil rights activists have been taking part in 45th anniversary ceremonies remembering the June 21, 1964, killings of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner and calling for justice in that case and others from the civil rights era.

Schwerner's widow, Rita Bender of Seattle, said she hopes federal authorities will lend their assistance not only to this case but also to any other case where enough evidence exists to pursue prosecution. "The clock is ticking," she said. "Time is running out."

Hundreds of FBI agents investigated the trio's disappearance, leading to the discovery of their bodies 44 days later. They had been buried 15 feet beneath an earthen dam.

In 1967, 18 men went on trial on federal conspiracy charges, and seven were convicted.

But the only murder prosecution took place in 2005 when a Neshoba County jury convicted reputed Klan leader Edgar Ray Killen on three counts of manslaughter. The FBI assisted the state's investigation that ended with Killen being sentenced to 60 years in prison.

The Clarion-Ledger has since revealed that the Neshoba County grand jury that indicted Killen came within one vote of also charging Posey, with a deciding vote against indictment cast by a Posey relative. The newspaper also has found three potential new witnesses against Posey.

The Clarion-Ledger has obtained a copy of statements Posey gave state authorities in which he admitted he was among those who pursued the trio that night, was there when they were killed and helped haul their bodies to the dam to bury them.

State prosecutors can't use Posey's statement because they agreed not to.

Neshoba County Deputy Cecil Price told authorities prior to his death that he told Posey in 1964 he had just jailed the three civil rights workers and asked Posey to get in contact with Killen.

In a new documentary, Neshoba, which focuses on events leading to Killen's conviction, Killen's wife, Jo, is quoted as saying, "I feel like Billy Wayne Posey was there, and I feel like he was more responsible than Edgar Ray was."

Although Posey has denied being a member of the Klan, his brother, Richard, said, "Ninety percent of the people in Neshoba County, Mississippi, were Klansmen. Hell, I was in there."

He said the trio were "warned to get the hell out. They didn't do it, so they wound up out there in the earthen dam. Damn good place for 'em."

Alvin Sykes of Kansas City, Mo., architect of legislation creating a cold-cases unit in the Justice Department, said Friday after speaking with Justice Department officials that "anybody that believes the Chaney-Goodman-Schwerner case is over may be mistaken. We feel comfortable there is an aggressive review under way."

He said he encouraged federal officials to communicate with Neshoba County District Attorney Mark Duncan and see if it's possible for a federal prosecutor to assist the state in the case.

Duncan could not be reached for comment, but he has said he would be willing to prosecute the case against others if more evidence emerged.

Since 2006, FBI agents have spent countless hours working on more than 100 unpunished killings from the civil rights era. In many of those cases, agents had little more to work with than newspaper articles.

But the most infamous triple killing from that era wasn't included in that work by agents, despite the fact the initial FBI investigation was so intensive it generated nearly 40,000 pages of documents.

Asked if FBI agents are actually out investigating the case, Miyar responded, "We never discuss the nature or particulars of a federal investigation."

State officials have just cleared the way for a historic marker to be placed on Mississippi 19 near where the trio were killed on Rock Cut Road.

The Philadelphia Coalition has purchased the marker to be placed there. "It's a means of acknowledging what happened in a public, unequivocal way," said Susan Glisson, director of the University of Mississippi's William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation, who worked with the coalition.