You Can Run...But You Can't Hide

I have been watching this story develop over the last couple of days and I have to say...it is what it is.

FULL STORY HERE

A Virginia Department of Transportation worker who told the Washington Post that he had no clue that his since-revoked vanity license plate contained a "coded racist message" has posted numerous internet messages denying the Holocaust and attacking President Obama as "muslime scum."



Last week, Carl Franzen reported for AOL News, "Personalized or vanity license plates typically fall somewhere between sentimental and silly, but this week, a photo of license plates containing a coded message of white supremacy made the rounds on the Web before the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles formally recalled them."

The Washington Post's Brigid Schulte spoke to Melanie Stokes, a member of the state's committee charged with vetting personalized license plates explained why 14CV88 was revoked.

A photo of the truck hit the Web a few days ago, went viral on car and other blogs and finally came to the attention of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, an advocacy group for American Muslims. On Wednesday morning, the group complained to the DMV that the plate contained a white supremacist and neo-Nazi statement.

A few hours later, the DMV agreed that the plate contains a coded message: The number 88 stands for the eighth letter of the alphabet, H, doubled to signify "Heil Hitler," said CAIR's Ibrahim Hooper. "CV" stands for "Confederate veteran" -- the plate was a special model embossed with a Confederate flag, which Virginia makes available for a $10 fee to card-carrying members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. And 14 is code for imprisoned white supremacist David Lane's 14-word motto: "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children."

The giveaway that something was amiss, Hooper said, was the truck itself. An enormous photo of the burning World Trade Center towers covers the entire tailgate, with the words: "Everything I ever needed to know about Islam I learned on 9/11."


In another Post article, Schulte writes, "Douglas Story, a Chantilly dump truck driver for the Virginia Department of Transportation, says he wanted to grab people's attention when he paid $224.90 to have a mural of the burning World Trade Center detailed onto the tailgate of his Ford F-150 along with a sticker that reads: "Everything I ever needed to know about Islam I learned on 9/11."



"There is absolutely no way I'd have anything to do with Hitler or Nazis," Story said Wednesday. He contacted The Washington Post after an article about his plate appeared last week; the state, citing privacy rules, had declined to release the identity of the plate's owner. "My sister-in-law and my niece are Jewish. I went to my niece's bat mitzvah when she turned 13 three years ago. Does that sound like something an anti-Semite would do?"



Story says the numbers 14 and 88 on his plate were not references to a white power slogan or "Heil Hitler," as the Council on American-Islamic Relations theorized, but an homage to his favorite NASCAR drivers: Tony Stewart, who drives car No. 14, and Dale Earnhardt Jr., who drives No. 88.



Story applied for the vanity plate in March 2009, shortly after Earnhardt changed his car number from 8 to 88 and Stewart changed his from 20 to 14.

Aside from the fact that Earnhardt changed his plate for the 2008 race season (after deciding in 2007), and Stewart announced his change in July of 2008, the Washington Post author fails to notice that her own reporting contains a major conflict in the two stories. CONTINUED HERE

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The conflict doesn't stop there - the man has been exposed - so why doesn't he just own up?

"WE DON'T WANT YOU HERE"

Remember Charles Juba? Now he thinks he wants access to our children but Odessa residents aren't ready to feed him their young.

FULL STORY HERE

ODESSA, Mo. (AP) -- Angry Odessa residents packed a meeting of municipal leaders to denounce plans by a former leader of a white supremacist group to open a club for young people in their city.


Charles Juba, a former self-proclaimed leader of the Aryan Nations, plans to open his under-21 club, Black Flag, on Friday, the Kansas City Star reported.

Juba said at a tense Board of Alderman meeting Monday night that he has put his racist and anti-Semitic past behind him, but he was shouted down by angry residents of Odessa, a city about 35 miles east of Kansas City.

"We don't want you here!" the crowd yelled in unison.

City leaders were initially thrilled about Juba's plans to open the club in a strip mall that had fallen on hard times, and they issued him a building permit. But that enthusiasm waned after they learned about his past.

"We know he's going to target young people, and now we're doing everything we can to stop him," Mayor Tom Murry said.

Resident James Johnson said at the meeting that he had felt at home raising two biracial sons with his German-born wife in Odessa. The audience responded with applause when he said "somebody should have known about this man before it got this far."

Rene Hill, a mother of three from Wellington, said she will fight Juba's efforts to use fun and music to recruit teens to join his Aryan cause.

"If I have to be that crazy mom, then so be it," Hill said.

Another public meeting was scheduled for Thursday.

The club's website says the club was named for the black flag carried by Civil War guerrilla William Quantrill, who led a pro-Confederate gang that attacked and burned pro-union Lawrence, Kan., during the Civil War. More than 150 men and boys were killed.

The website for the club, which invites high school students from Blue Springs, Independence, Fort Osage, Grain Valley and Oak Grove, said the black flag represented people who didn't surrender.

"These brave young men refused to surrender to unjust laws being forced upon them (by federal authorities and military) ... So, why surrender to another boring night ... raise The Black Flag and have some fun for a change!"

The watchdog group the Southern Poverty Law Center says Juba began his white supremacy activities in the Ku Klux Klan before eventually becoming director of the Aryan Nations, which says blacks are "beasts of the field" and Jews are the children of Satan.

In 2005, Juba announced that the group would move its headquarters from Pennsylvania to Kansas City, Kan. The controversy that followed prompted Juba to quit his post, and the Aryan Nation moved its headquarters to Sebring, Fla.

PROFILING PEARCE

Arizona has been a hotbed of dissent and racist B.S. for many years now. Skinheads, anti-immigration groups, crooked law-enforcement, and right-wing nutjobs seem to love the desert and dry air. But, the new immigration law that was just passed enabling racial profiling and discrimination is taking center stage and having ramifications around the country. David Niewert now introduces us to the author of that law...and Russell Pearce is certainly no stranger to the more prominent racists enjoying the Arizona climate.

FULL STORY AND VIDEO HERE

DOOKIE DUKIE AT IT AGAIN

Always the huckster and the opportunist, Dukie just had to try to capitalize on all of the current hoopla and shenanigans going on in this country. Never mind that he spends most of his time as far away from America as he can get - he's still going to seize any opportunity to insinuate himself into a headline.

Of course, I'm not surprised, nor even chagrined by his recent play for attention. You see, like all good white supremacists, they continuously make my point for me.

STORY AND VIDEO HERE

A NEW "TWIST" ON BARRETT

FULL STORY HERE

By Howard Ballou

RANKIN COUNTY, MS (WLBT) - Our 3 On Your Side investigation in this case has revealed there may have been a motive other than money for the murder of Richard Barrett.


Official sources who asked not to be identified, tell WLBT, 22-year-old Vincent McGee, in his confession, alleged Barrett made sexual advances to him, apparently sending McGee into a rage, a rage that ended in murder.


We asked Sheriff Pennington about it. He had no comment other than to say the murder was not racially motivated. Rankin-Madison County District Attorney Michael Guest also would not discuss specifics of the case, but he did have this to say.


"I was surprised to hear about this and then as the case unfolded, there were other twists and turns that again were unforeseen in this case," Guest said.


McGee's family members told WLBT, Thursday night, that McGee, when he was a teenager, before he went to prison, knew Barrett and had worked for him.

MELCUR MADDNESS

A tragic ending to a tragic life is not something that I enjoy reporting. When it involves innocents - I deplore it. Curt Maynard shot his wife, his step-daughter, and himself and left two others scarred for life.

FULL STORY FOUND HERE

Man kills ex-wife, then himself


Lake Jackson murder-suicide followed bitter divorce, woman's lawyer says

By PEGGY O'HARE

HOUSTON CHRONICLE

April 23, 2010, 12:17AM



Share Print Share Del.icio.usDiggTwitterYahoo! BuzzFacebookStumbleUponThe Lake Jackson woman shot to death by her ex-husband before he killed himself during a police chase had gone through a bitter, contentious divorce from him and suffered personal attacks from him on the Internet, her attorney said on Thursday.



Melissa Meza, 34, a Dow Chemical engineer, was shot multiple times in the front yard of her home Wednesday night by 42-year-old Curtis Boone Maynard, a registered nurse, who later shot himself. The couple had been divorced for more than a year.



Maynard also shot his 16-year-old stepdaughter, Celeste Morales, in the face inside the home before fleeing in his car. Morales remains in stable condition at Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center.



Maynard and Meza's two children, a 12-year-old girl and 2-year-old girl, fled to a neighbor's house and were not hurt, said Lake Jackson police Lt. Paul Kibodeaux



“The 12-year-old picked the 2-year-old up and ran to the neighbor's house — very brave,” Kibodeaux said.



Lenette Terry, the Angleton attorney who represented Meza in her divorce from Maynard, called the slain woman's ex-husband “a nut.”



Divorce final last year

The divorce was very contentious, Terry said Thursday. Maynard “always did crazy things,” she said. “This guy also had some horrible things about her on the Internet and he sent them to her boss at Dow — she brought the stuff in to me and she reported it to the Lake Jackson Police Department.



“She knew she had to get out of this relationship with him. She knew she had to protect her kids. And she was right,” Terry said.



Maynard and Meza met in 1996. They married in August 2005 in Brazoria County, state records show. But the marriage soured in just three years, and Meza filed for divorce in December 2008.



The former couple also had a contested temporary hearing concerning the custody of their children. “She prevailed,” Terry recalled. “He would do things like leave the infant at home when he would go walk to Randall's (grocery store).”



In an angry blog railing against his divorce attorney, Maynard claimed that he and Meza had agreed during their marriage that he would not work on weekdays so he could stay home to care for their youngest daughter, and that he would work only on weekends, which he said put a significant dent in his income. He referred to himself as the “primary caregiver” of the youngest girl and said he had sought sole custody of their two daughters.



The couple's divorce became final in March 2009, but Maynard would not let go, even though Meza had a boyfriend.



On Wednesday, Maynard had been sending text messages to his ex-wife “throughout the day,” Kibodeaux said. Police don't yet know if she responded to him, but she complained about the text messages to a witness.



At 8:20 p.m., neighbors reported hearing gunshots at Meza's home in the 100 block of Post Oak, a quiet, tree-lined street of upper-middle-class houses. The teenager was shot inside the house, while Meza was shot in the front yard, Kibodeaux said.



“She was later shot more times in a different location, but close by, so I would think she was trying to take cover or concealment and was shot again,” Kibodeaux said. Meza had multiple wounds in the head and upper torso, he said.



First homicide in years

Maynard left a shotgun in the front yard, then got in his 1994 Lincoln sedan and drove away, Kibodeaux said. A neighbor followed Maynard's car while on the phone with 911, giving police information on which direction he was heading.



When Lake Jackson police caught up to Maynard's car heading northward on Texas 288 slightly above the 65 mph speed limit, Maynard shot himself in the head with another gun, a semi-automatic rifle, while he was driving, police said.



Maynard's car then veered on to the highway shoulder, where it struck a sport utility vehicle occupied by a mother and her two children that had pulled over to yield to the emergency vehicles. The gunman's car then veered into the grass and back across the highway's two northbound lanes before stopping on the inside shoulder.



The woman and two children inside the SUV hit by Maynard suffered no obvious injuries, but were taken to an Angleton hospital as a precaution, Kibodeaux said.



Police said they have not found anything in writing to indicate that Maynard had planned on taking violent action against anyone, but said they still must review his and his former wife's cell phone records.



“We have seen a few e-mails (from Maynard), but mainly they were character attacks and no indication there would be action taken,” Kibodeaux said.



Meza and Maynard's daughters are now staying with a close family friend, police said.



Child Protective Services caseworkers are meeting with the children's maternal and paternal grandparents about making more permanent living arrangements, Kibodeaux said.



Meza's death marked the first homicide in Lake Jackson in about a decade, the police lieutenant said.

BARRETT FOUND MURDERED...

He wasn't particularly endeared to many of the white supremacists who consider themselves part of "the movement." However, he has always seemed to have a scraggling of followers among young, white, male racists and he knew how to grab a headline every now and then. He made a lot of enemies along the way - and apparently, was still making them.

According to One People's Project, he was the inspiration who started the group. Well, that's something positive.


UPDATE:

Man arrested in death of Miss. white supremacist
STORY HERE

Pearl Police, Rankin County Sheriff, state and federal investigators are looking for the person who murdered white supremacist Richard Barrett. His body was found in the back bathroom of his Rankin County home Thursday morning. Police believe Barrett may have been trying to escape from his attacker. His body has been taken to the state crime lab for an autopsy.



Barrett’s neighbors called fire officials shortly before eight o’clock this morning to report a fire at 227 East Petros Road. Firefighters discovered Barrett’s body inside the home once they entered.


Barrett called himself the head of the Nationalists Movement. He was recently in the news supporting efforts at Ole Miss to bring back Colonel Reb as the school’s mascot. He made national headlines five years ago when he attempted to bring Edgar Ray Killen to a booth at the Mississippi State Fair. Killen was later arrested and convicted for his roll in the death of three civil rights workers in Neshoba County in the 1960s.

By MARIA BURNHAM and HOLBROOK MOHR (AP) – 4 hours ago






PEARL, Miss. — A white supremacist lawyer with a knack for publicity was found stabbed to death in a burning house on Thursday and Mississippi authorities later said a neighbor had been charged with murder.






Rankin County Sheriff Ronnie Pennington said Richard Barrett's body was found just after 8 a.m. after residents reported smoke coming from his house in a rural area outside a Jackson, Miss., suburb.






Pennington told The Associated Press that Vincent McGee, 22, has been charged with murder in the case. Additional charges could be forthcoming, Pennington said, including arson.






The sheriff said McGee had not yet hired a lawyer and the suspect's mother had no comment when she went to the jail where her son was being held.






McGee, a black man, lived nearby and had done yard work for Barrett in the past, Pennington said. The sheriff didn't elaborate on a possible motive.






Barrett, a New York City native and Vietnam War veteran, moved to Mississippi in 1966. Soon after, he began traveling the country to promote anti-black and anti-immigrant views and founded a supremacist group called the Nationalist Movement.






One expert on hate groups said Barrett was well known for his news conferences and protests in places having racial strife, but that he had mustered little real clout in the white power movement.






"Richard Barrett was a guy who ran around the country essentially pulling off publicity stunts," said Mark Potok, who monitors hate groups for the Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center. "He really never amounted to any kind of leader in the white supremacist movement." CONTINUED HERE..