Vlemx News: Keep Informed

It was 1988 and Lester Lloyd Coke’s Shower Posse — a notorious Jamaican drug gang — was deep into gun and drug running. He was wanted in a South Florida courtroom to answer to murder and drug charges, but never made it to Miami to stand trial.

Now, two decades later, another Coke is accused of running the Shower Posse.

It’s Lester’s son, Christopher “Dudus” Coke, the man wanted for extradition by the U.S. on drug and weapons charges and the object of a manhunt that has touched off a bloody battle between Jamaican authorities and his supporters in Kingston. The government announced last week that the violence had claimed 73 lives.

“All of this old stuff is coming up again,” said Len Cartor, a former Miami-Dade police sergeant who worked in the department’s warrants bureau and arrested the father, also known as Jim Brown, in the 1980s.

Though the father has been dead for 22 years, there’s still a painting of him in Tivoli Gardens, where some of the fiercest fighting between government troops and gunmen loyal to Christopher Coke took place this week. It reads: “Legend Jim Brown, don of dons.”

The violence now erupting in Jamaica has its roots in 1980s Miami, when Jamaicans and Colombians were the soldiers in the cocaine wars, say those who worked to put them behind bars.

Under Lester Coke, the Shower Posse — so-named because it rained bullets down on rival gangs — was centered in Jamaica but its tentacles reached far into the United States.

“It seemed like Miami was their secondary base of operations,” said retired Miami-Dade police Sgt. Kevin Dougherty, who tracked Coke while working with MDPD’s Warrants Bureau.

Coke was well-known to Jamaican law enforcement and was an activist in the Jamaica Labour Party long before he was indicted in 1988 along with dozens of others by a federal grand jury.

“It was a whole gun running and drug running operation going up and down the East Coast,” said Andrew Reich, an assistant U.S. attorney who handled the case. “Coke was one of the lead players.”

Then, as now, the gangs enjoyed backing from political parties on the island.

“Tivoli Gardens residents looked to Jim Brown for leadership,” said David Rowe, who represented Vivian Blake, a Shower Posse leader indicted with Coke. “He was a well-known and notorious enforcer and that reputation followed him. He was always hounded by federal authorities when he was here. Once they became aware of the activities of the Shower Posse, Jim Brown was always under some degree of scrutiny.”

Rowe, who never met father or son, said there appears to be a difference in leadership styles between the two men.

“The father was a little more abrasive, prominent individual,” said the Jamaican-born Rowe, an adjunct law professor at the University of Miami and extradition expert. “The son is a better educated person, and he’s quiet.”

In the summer of 1985, a U.S. Marshals task force was out searching for dangerous fugitives in the Miami area. The Jamaican government had put out wanted fliers for Lester Coke, sought in the “mass murder” of 12 in May 1985 in Kingston. He was also sought in two other shootings.

That July 17, Doughtery got a tip that led authorities to a house in the Norland neighborhood in Northwest Miami–Dade County. A morning drive by the house revealed that a 5’10, 240-pound man believed to be Coke was inside.

The Special Response Team broke down the door and Coke, along with 10 others, was arrested on marijuana trafficking charges. Officers seized more than 100 pounds of marijuana.

“He was just a quiet guy,” Doughtery said. “He was in the company of some other really bad people. None of these `dons’ were ever overtly aggressive to us.”

The charges against Coke were later dropped after another man said the marijuana was his.

A year or two later, Coke ran into some of the very officers who arrested him. Doughtery was eating in The Ham & Eggery on 167th Street when in walked Coke.

Coke was personable, he said, and even posed for Polaroid pictures with the officers.

In 1987, Coke was deported back to Jamaica despite his efforts to remain in the U.S. Jamaican authorities had accused him of the 12 murders but later dismissed the charges.

On Sept. 28, 1988, Coke was indicted by the U.S. government along with 33 others accused of being members of a violent gang, described in a Herald article as the “largest and most powerful” of 40 Jamaican gangs.

The indictment, which spanned 1984 to 1986, said the gang was directed in Miami by Vivian Blake, now deceased, and from Jamaica by Coke. It blamed the gang for two murder cases in November of 1984, including a quintuple homicide.

It marked the first time the federal RICO law was used in an indictment against Jamaican gangs.

“The leaders of the Shower Posse were very entrepreneurial,” said Lee Stapleton, a former assistant U.S. Attorney who prosecuted Blake after he was extradited. “They realized not only that Miami was a great staging area for their drug business, but it was a great market and a comfortable place for them to live.”

Coke died before he could return to the U.S. to face charges. He was awaiting extradition in 1992 when there was a fire in his cell block. Officials at the Kingston hospital where his body was taken said he suffered severe burns.

But the father’s legacy lives on in the son — and his alleged criminal enterprises.

“The `parent’ Shower Posse limited most of their violence to drug disputes within the organization and among competitors,” said Stapleton. “The progeny Shower Posse that `Dudus’ has has taken the violence further. . . . the second generation of the Shower Posse seems like the parent Shower Posse on steroids.”

Said Bruce Udolf, a former federal prosecutor who worked on the Coke case in the late 1980s: “They were a very deadly group. We had thought that they had been effectively dismantled. . . . It’s curious to see that there’s another generation out there operating under that same name.”

Miami Herald Staff Writer Jim Wyss, reporting from Kingston, contributed to this report.

The Miami Herald
Posted on Mon, May. 31, 2010
By JENNIFER LEBOVICH AND TRENTON DANIEL
jlebovich@MiamiHerald.com
Jamaican drug king’s father found fertile ground in 1980s Miami.

Read more:

http://vlemxkeepinformed.blogspot.com/2010/05/jamaican-drug-kings-father-found.html#ixzz0pY6xPkFN

Contact Information:
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Washington, DC

Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, today released its 2009 list of Washington’s “Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians.” The list, in alphabetical order, includes:

1. Senator Christopher Dodd (D-CT): This marks two years in a row for Senator Dodd, who made the 2008 “Ten Most Corrupt” list for his corrupt relationship with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and for accepting preferential treatment and loan terms from Countrywide Financial, a scandal which still dogs him. In 2009, the scandals kept coming for the Connecticut Democrat. In 2009, Judicial Watch filed a Senate ethics complaint against Dodd for undervaluing a property he owns in Ireland on his Senate Financial Disclosure forms. Judicial Watch’s complaint forced Dodd to amend the forms. However, press reports suggest the property to this day remains undervalued. Judicial Watch also alleges in the complaint that Dodd obtained a sweetheart deal for the property in exchange for his assistance in obtaining a presidential pardon (during the Clinton administration) and other favors for a long-time friend and business associate. The false financial disclosure forms were part of the cover-up. Dodd remains the head the Senate Banking Committee.

2. Senator John Ensign (R-NV): A number of scandals popped up in 2009 involving public officials who conducted illicit affairs, and then attempted to cover them up with hush payments and favors, an obvious abuse of power. The year’s worst offender might just be Nevada Republican Senator John Ensign. Ensign admitted in June to an extramarital affair with the wife of one of his staff members, who then allegedly obtained special favors from the Nevada Republican in exchange for his silence. According to The New York Times: “The Justice Department and the Senate Ethics Committee are expected to conduct preliminary inquiries into whether Senator John Ensign violated federal law or ethics rules as part of an effort to conceal an affair with the wife of an aide…” The former staffer, Douglas Hampton, began to lobby Mr. Ensign’s office immediately upon leaving his congressional job, despite the fact that he was subject to a one-year lobbying ban. Ensign seems to have ignored the law and allowed Hampton lobbying access to his office as a payment for his silence about the affair. (These are potentially criminal offenses.) It looks as if Ensign misused his public office (and taxpayer resources) to cover up his sexual shenanigans.

3. Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA): Judicial Watch is investigating a $12 million TARP cash injection provided to the Boston-based OneUnited Bank at the urging of Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank. As reported in the January 22, 2009, edition of the Wall Street Journal, the Treasury Department indicated it would only provide funds to healthy banks to jump-start lending. Not only was OneUnited Bank in massive financial turmoil, but it was also “under attack from its regulators for allegations of poor lending practices and executive-pay abuses, including owning a Porsche for its executives’ use.” Rep. Frank admitted he spoke to a “federal regulator,” and Treasury granted the funds. (The bank continues to flounder despite Frank’s intervention for federal dollars.) Moreover, Judicial Watch uncovered documents in 2009 that showed that members of Congress for years were aware that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were playing fast and loose with accounting issues, risk assessment issues and executive compensation issues, even as liberals led by Rep. Frank continued to block attempts to rein in the two Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs). For example, during a hearing on September 10, 2003, before the House Committee on Financial Services considering a Bush administration proposal to further regulate Fannie and Freddie, Rep. Frank stated: “I want to begin by saying that I am glad to consider the legislation, but I do not think we are facing any kind of a crisis. That is, in my view, the two Government Sponsored Enterprises we are talking about here, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, are not in a crisis. We have recently had an accounting problem with Freddie Mac that has led to people being dismissed, as appears to be appropriate. I do not think at this point there is a problem with a threat to the Treasury.” Frank received $42,350 in campaign contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac between 1989 and 2008. Frank also engaged in a relationship with a Fannie Mae Executive while serving on the House Banking Committee, which has jurisdiction over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

4. Secretary of Treasury Timothy Geithner: In 2009, Obama Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner admitted that he failed to pay $34,000 in Social Security and Medicare taxes from 2001-2004 on his lucrative salary at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), an organization with 185 member countries that oversees the global financial system. (Did we mention Geithner now runs the IRS?) It wasn’t until President Obama tapped Geithner to head the Treasury Department that he paid back most of the money, although the IRS kindly waived the hefty penalties. In March 2009, Geithner also came under fire for his handling of the AIG bonus scandal, where the company used $165 million of its bailout funds to pay out executive bonuses, resulting in a massive public backlash. Of course as head of the New York Federal Reserve, Geithner helped craft the AIG deal in September 2008. However, when the AIG scandal broke, Geithner claimed he knew nothing of the bonuses until March 10, 2009. The timing is important. According to CNN: “Although Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told congressional leaders on Tuesday that he learned of AIG’s impending $160 million bonus payments to members of its troubled financial-products unit on March 10, sources tell TIME that the New York Federal Reserve informed Treasury staff that the payments were imminent on Feb. 28. That is ten days before Treasury staffers say they first learned ‘full details’ of the bonus plan, and three days before the [Obama] Administration launched a new $30 billion infusion of cash for AIG.” Throw in another embarrassing disclosure in 2009 that Geithner employed “household help” ineligible to work in the United States, and it becomes clear why the Treasury Secretary has earned a spot on the “Ten Most Corrupt Politicians in Washington” list.

5. Attorney General Eric Holder: Tim Geithner can be sure he won’t be hounded about his tax-dodging by his colleague Eric Holder, US Attorney General. Judicial Watch strongly opposed Holder because of his terrible ethics record, which includes: obstructing an FBI investigation of the theft of nuclear secrets from Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratory; rejecting multiple requests for an independent counsel to investigate alleged fundraising abuses by then-Vice President Al Gore in the Clinton White House; undermining the criminal investigation of President Clinton by Kenneth Starr in the midst of the Lewinsky investigation; and planning the violent raid to seize then-six-year-old Elian Gonzalez at gunpoint in order to return him to Castro’s Cuba. Moreover, there is his soft record on terrorism. Holder bypassed Justice Department procedures to push through Bill Clinton’s scandalous presidential pardons and commutations, including for 16 members of FALN, a violent Puerto Rican terrorist group that orchestrated approximately 120 bombings in the United States, killing at least six people and permanently maiming dozens of others, including law enforcement officers. His record in the current administration is no better. As he did during the Clinton administration, Holder continues to ignore serious incidents of corruption that could impact his political bosses at the White House. For example, Holder has refused to investigate charges that the Obama political machine traded VIP access to the White House in exchange for campaign contributions – a scheme eerily similar to one hatched by Holder’s former boss, Bill Clinton in the 1990s. The Holder Justice Department also came under fire for dropping a voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party. On Election Day 2008, Black Panthers dressed in paramilitary garb threatened voters as they approached polling stations. Holder has also failed to initiate a comprehensive Justice investigation of the notorious organization ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), which is closely tied to President Obama. There were allegedly more than 400,000 fraudulent ACORN voter registrations in the 2008 campaign. And then there were the journalist videos catching ACORN Housing workers advising undercover reporters on how to evade tax, immigration, and child prostitution laws. Holder’s controversial decisions on new rights for terrorists and his attacks on previous efforts to combat terrorism remind many of the fact that his former law firm has provided and continues to provide pro bono representation to terrorists at Guantanamo Bay. Holder’s politicization of the Justice Department makes one long for the days of Alberto Gonzales.

6. Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-IL)/ Senator Roland Burris (D-IL): One of the most serious scandals of 2009 involved a scheme by former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich to sell President Obama’s then-vacant Senate seat to the highest bidder. Two men caught smack dab in the middle of the scandal: Senator Roland Burris, who ultimately got the job, and Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, emissaries for Jesse Jackson Jr., named “Senate Candidate A” in the Blagojevich indictment, reportedly offered $1.5 million to Blagojevich during a fundraiser if he named Jackson Jr. to Obama’s seat. Three days later federal authorities arrested Blagojevich. Burris, for his part, apparently lied about his contacts with Blagojevich, who was arrested in December 2008 for trying to sell Obama’s Senate seat. According to Reuters: “Roland Burris came under fresh scrutiny…after disclosing he tried to raise money for the disgraced former Illinois governor who named him to the U.S. Senate seat once held by President Barack Obama…In the latest of those admissions, Burris said he looked into mounting a fundraiser for Rod Blagojevich — later charged with trying to sell Obama’s Senate seat — at the same time he was expressing interest to the then-governor’s aides about his desire to be appointed.” Burris changed his story five times regarding his contacts with Blagojevich prior to the Illinois governor appointing him to the U.S. Senate. Three of those changing explanations came under oath.

7. President Barack Obama: During his presidential campaign, President Obama promised to run an ethical and transparent administration. However, in his first year in office, the President has delivered corruption and secrecy, bringing Chicago-style political corruption to the White House. Consider just a few Obama administration “lowlights” from year one: Even before President Obama was sworn into office, he was interviewed by the FBI for a criminal investigation of former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich’s scheme to sell the President’s former Senate seat to the highest bidder. (Obama’s Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and slumlord Valerie Jarrett, both from Chicago, are also tangled up in the Blagojevich scandal.) Moreover, the Obama administration made the startling claim that the Privacy Act does not apply to the White House. The Obama White House believes it can violate the privacy rights of American citizens without any legal consequences or accountability. President Obama boldly proclaimed that “transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency,” but his administration is addicted to secrecy, stonewalling far too many of Judicial Watch’s Freedom of Information Act requests and is refusing to make public White House visitor logs as federal law requires. The Obama administration turned the National Endowment of the Arts (as well as the agency that runs the AmeriCorps program) into propaganda machines, using tax dollars to persuade “artists” to promote the Obama agenda. According to documents uncovered by Judicial Watch, the idea emerged as a direct result of the Obama campaign and enjoyed White House approval and participation. President Obama has installed a record number of “czars” in positions of power. Too many of these individuals are leftist radicals who answer to no one but the president. And too many of the czars are not subject to Senate confirmation (which raises serious constitutional questions). Under the President’s bailout schemes, the federal government continues to appropriate or control — through fiat and threats — large sectors of the private economy, prompting conservative columnist George Will to write: “The administration’s central activity — the political allocation of wealth and opportunity — is not merely susceptible to corruption, it is corruption.” Government-run healthcare and car companies, White House coercion, uninvestigated ACORN corruption, debasing his office to help Chicago cronies, attacks on conservative media and the private sector, unprecedented and dangerous new rights for terrorists, perks for campaign donors – this is Obama’s “ethics” record — and we haven’t even gotten through the first year of his presidency.

8. Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA): At the heart of the corruption problem in Washington is a sense of entitlement. Politicians believe laws and rules (even the U.S. Constitution) apply to the rest of us but not to them. Case in point: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her excessive and boorish demands for military travel. Judicial Watch obtained documents from the Pentagon in 2008 that suggest Pelosi has been treating the Air Force like her own personal airline. These documents, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, include internal Pentagon email correspondence detailing attempts by Pentagon staff to accommodate Pelosi’s numerous requests for military escorts and military aircraft as well as the speaker’s 11th hour cancellations and changes. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi also came under fire in April 2009, when she claimed she was never briefed about the CIA’s use of the waterboarding technique during terrorism investigations. The CIA produced a report documenting a briefing with Pelosi on September 4, 2002, that suggests otherwise. Judicial Watch also obtained documents, including a CIA Inspector General report, which further confirmed that Congress was fully briefed on the enhanced interrogation techniques. Aside from her own personal transgressions, Nancy Pelosi has ignored serious incidents of corruption within her own party, including many of the individuals on this list. (See Rangel, Murtha, Jesse Jackson, Jr., etc.)

9. Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) and the rest of the PMA Seven: Rep. John Murtha made headlines in 2009 for all the wrong reasons. The Pennsylvania congressman is under federal investigation for his corrupt relationship with the now-defunct defense lobbyist PMA Group. PMA, founded by a former Murtha associate, has been the congressman’s largest campaign contributor. Since 2002, Murtha has raised $1.7 million from PMA and its clients. And what did PMA and its clients receive from Murtha in return for their generosity? Earmarks — tens of millions of dollars in earmarks. In fact, even with all of the attention surrounding his alleged influence peddling, Murtha kept at it. Following an FBI raid of PMA’s offices earlier in 2009, Murtha continued to seek congressional earmarks for PMA clients, while also hitting them up for campaign contributions. According to The Hill, in April, “Murtha reported receiving contributions from three former PMA clients for whom he requested earmarks in the pending appropriations bills.” When it comes to the PMA scandal, Murtha is not alone. As many as six other Members of Congress are currently under scrutiny according to The Washington Post. They include: Peter J. Visclosky (D-IN.), James P. Moran Jr. (D-VA), Norm Dicks (D-WA.), Marcy Kaptur (D-OH), C.W. Bill Young (R-FL.) and Todd Tiahrt (R-KS.). Of course rather than investigate this serious scandal, according to Roll Call House Democrats circled the wagons, “cobbling together a defense to offer political cover to their rank and file.” The Washington Post also reported in 2009 that Murtha’s nephew received $4 million in Defense Department no-bid contracts: “Newly obtained documents…show Robert Murtha mentioning his influential family connection as leverage in his business dealings and holding unusual power with the military.”

10. Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY): Rangel, the man in charge of writing tax policy for the entire country, has yet to adequately explain how he could possibly “forget” to pay taxes on $75,000 in rental income he earned from his off-shore rental property. He also faces allegations that he improperly used his influence to maintain ownership of highly coveted rent-controlled apartments in Harlem, and misused his congressional office to fundraise for his private Rangel Center by preserving a tax loophole for an oil drilling company in exchange for funding. On top of all that, Rangel recently amended his financial disclosure reports, which doubled his reported wealth. (He somehow “forgot” about $1 million in assets.) And what did he do when the House Ethics Committee started looking into all of this? He apparently resorted to making “campaign contributions” to dig his way out of trouble. According to WCBS TV, a New York CBS affiliate: “The reigning member of Congress’ top tax committee is apparently ‘wrangling’ other politicos to get him out of his own financial and tax troubles…Since ethics probes began last year the 79-year-old congressman has given campaign donations to 119 members of Congress, including three of the five Democrats on the House Ethics Committee who are charged with investigating him.” Charlie Rangel should not be allowed to remain in Congress, let alone serve as Chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, and he knows it. That’s why he felt the need to disburse campaign contributions to Ethics Committee members and other congressional colleagues.

Thank you for contacting me regarding the expansion of domestic drilling in our nation. I appreciate hearing from you and would like to respond to your concerns.

The United States faces a fundamental need for increased domestic energy supply in the face of increased global demand to reduce energy prices. I share your concerns with the high price of fuel and its effects, particularly the unprecedented wealth reallocation resulting from our nation’s dependence on foreign oil.

I helped design the Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act (S. 3711), which was passed into law in 2006. This bill opened 8 million acres of the Outer Continental Shelf in the western Gulf of Mexico for oil and gas exploration while securing environmental protection for Florida’s beaches. Although this opened OCS area contains trillions of cubic feet of natural gas and millions of barrels of oil, no new production has begun. Production in this area is the most immediate option we have for a large-scale increase in domestic energy supply. We must take advantage of this available asset before considering expanding coastal drilling that may jeopardize our beaches.

In order to increase domestic energy supply, I have consistently supported an environmentally responsible approach for oil and gas exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). I have also promoted coal-to-liquids technology, the development of cellulosic ethanol and other non-food-based renewable fuels, tax incentives for renewable energies, and the extraction of vast oil shale deposits in America’s West. To reduce demand, I have consistently supported increases in fuel efficiency standards and investment in mass transit. I am committed to both increasing domestic supply and decreasing domestic demand of energy in order to alleviate these factors that contribute to high fuel prices.

I am working closely with the Administration and my colleagues in the Senate to ensure that Florida’s voice is heard as we address the need for increased domestic energy supply. Thank you for sharing your thoughts with me. Please do not hesitate to contact me with any additional comments or questions. For more information about issues and activities important to Florida, please sign up for my weekly newsletter at http://martinez.senate.gov.

Sincerely,

Mel Martinez
United States Senator

September 9, 2008

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Kurt in Pittsburgh, hello, sir.  Nice to have you on the EIB Network, and how about the Steelers defense?

CALLER:  How about those Steelers, huh?

RUSH:  How about that?

CALLER:  Hey, listen, Rush, longtime listener, first-time caller, one of those Bible, family, gun clingers from western Pennsylvania.

RUSH:  Thank you.

CALLER:  And I wanted to share a story with you.  A week ago last Saturday we went to the Palin-McCain rally in Washington, Pennsylvania, and we have a five-year-old daughter with Down syndrome, and we made a sign that said: ‘We Love Kids with Down Syndrome.’  So when they pulled in in their bus the sign did catch their, McCain and Palin and the rest of their family, it caught their eye, we could tell, they gave us a thumbs-up from the bus, so we were all excited just by that –

RUSH:  Wait, wait, wait.  Who gave you the thumbs up, McCain and Palin?

CALLER:  McCain, Palin, Cindy McCain, we could see them from the bus. We were in a position where we had eye contact with them –

RUSH:  Oh, cool!

CALLER:  My wife was holding our daughter.

RUSH:  Very, very, very cool.

CALLER:  It was really cool, Rush. I was like, ‘Wow, that’s awesome,’ because I love Governor Palin and so I thought that’s really neat.  So then we moved around as the bus was getting ready to pull out, we kind of positioned ourselves so we could just wave them on and a Secret Service agent came up to us and said, ‘Hey, can you come with us?’  I was like, ‘Do we have a choice?’

RUSH: (laughing) You shouldn’t have worried.  It’s not the Clinton administration.

CALLER: Right. So we accompanied them up the hill, we went right to the bus, where it was, and Governor Palin, Senator McCain, Cindy, Todd Palin, they’re all standing there. We’re in this inner circle with just us and them, and the Secret Service agent, and they came right up to us and thanked us for coming out, said they loved our sign, and Governor Palin immediately said, ‘May I hold your daughter?’ and our daughter Chloe, who’s five, went right to her, and I have some pictures I’d love to send you maybe when I’m done here, but Governor Palin was hugging Chloe, and then her little daughter brought their baby Trig who has Down syndrome from the bus, he was napping, and Chloe went right over and kissed him on the cheek, and my son Nolan who’s nine, he thanked her.

RUSH: This is amazing.

CALLER: I will send you all the stuff, Senator McCain was talking to my son, and we thanked him for his service, and he asked my son if he wanted to see the bus, and we were hanging out and it was very surreal. I felt like we could have had a pizza and a beer with them, they were so warm.

RUSH: You know what? I want to put you on hold. I want Snerdley to give you our super-secret, known-only-to-three-people here, e-mail address.

CALLER: I will send you everything, Rush.

RUSH: And then could you send us these pictures? Would you mind if we put them on the website?

CALLER: I would be honored, and my main thing is they are warm, kind, genuine people, and they represent the best of this country.

RUSH:  That’s right.  And when you send these pictures, make sure you identify them.  I mean, we’ll know Palin and McCain, of course.  Identify yourselves.

CALLER:  I will, I will identify everybody in the picture, Rush, and God bless you for being a beacon of hope and truth in this country.

RUSH:  Oh, no, no.  It’s nothing, it’s nothing.  You’re doing the Lord’s work.

CALLER:  Well, we’re very blessed and I want people to know what a blessing it is to have a child with Down syndrome. These kids, they’re angels.

RUSH:  That’s the thing.  There’s always good to be found in everything that happens.  It may be a while before it reveals itself.

CALLER:  Absolutely.

RUSH:  Right, and when she hugged my daughter I said, here’s the difference, this candidate embraces life and all its limitless possibilities.

RUSH:  All right.

CALLER:  That’s what she is.

RUSH:  Terrific, okay, I gotta run here, but I’m going to put you on hold.

CALLER:  Thank you, Rush.

RUSH:  Thank you, Kurt.  I really appreciate it.

END TRANSCRIPT

The facts surrounding the New York City rally organized by the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, to protest the visit of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and demonstrate opposition to the Iranian government’s effort to acquire nuclear weapons, are slowly trickling out.

Governor Sarah Palin, on behalf of the Republican presidential ticket, was invited and accepted.

Senator Hillary Clinton was invited presumably to represent the Obama team but then withdrew in a [1] fit of pique, we are told, upon learning that Palin would be there.

An effort was extended to [2] Senator Joe Biden but he was otherwise occupied.

A group of [3] liberal Jewish groups then prevailed on the rally organizers to disinvite Palin. What was to be a bipartisan show of support had collapsed. The McCain camp fired off a statement on Thursday:

Throughout my political career, I have sought to rise above partisanship on critical national issues. Nowhere is this truer than on important matters of national security. Earlier this year, Senator Clinton, Senator Obama and I issued a joint statement on the genocide in Darfur and pledged to support efforts to bring it to an end. Earlier this month, Senator Obama and I put the campaign aside to commemorate the seventh anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on our country and talk about the importance of national service.

“Next Monday, the day before Iranian President Ahmadinejad is to speak before the United Nations General Assembly, several organizations will sponsor an event to draw attention to the importance of halting Iran’s efforts to acquire nuclear weapons. Governor Palin and I share a strong belief that a nuclear armed Iran poses a grave threat to the security of Americans and to our allies. Iran is the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism. The risk that Iran would provide terrorists with a nuclear weapon is too great for the world to ignore. Iranian President Ahmadinejad has denied the Holocaust occurred and called Israel a ’stinking corpse.’ A nuclear-armed Iran would destabilize the entire region.

Preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons should be a shared goal of every American, not another occasion for partisan posturing.

“Governor Palin was pleased to accept an invitation to address this rally and show her resolve on this grave national security issue, regrettably that invitation has since been withdrawn under pressure from Democratic partisans. We stand shoulder to shoulder with Republicans, Democrats and independents alike to oppose Ahmadinejad’s goal of a nuclear armed Iran. Senator Obama’s campaign had the opportunity to join us. Senator Obama chose politics rather than the national interest.

Thursday evening I spoke with Matt Brooks, executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, about the cancellation of the event next week. He said: “This is one of the saddest days for the Jewish community — to let a vocal minority of partisan folks hijack a bipartisan event.” “We should send a message to Iran and the rest of the world that Iran’s effort to acquire nuclear weapons is unacceptable,” he added. Brooks holds activist groups such as  “J Street” (a group of Left wing activists attempting to style themselves as an alternative to AIPAC) responsible for “stirring the pot” and pressuring the event’s sponsors to withdraw the invitation to allow Palin to speak. He said, “At the end of the day all we can ask of community leaders is to invite both sides to attend.”

Many observers, regardless of political preference, would agree that this was a shameful episode.

Apparently, the Obama camp and its allies on the left have higher priorities than a showing of bipartisan solidarity on an issue they claim to care about. Whatever drama surrounds the Clintons had ripped through the Jewish community, dashed a showing of bipartisan support, and given Ahmadinejad a moral victory.

But Barack Obama may have been the biggest loser on a number of fronts.

Obama is after all struggling to [4] overcome skepticism in the Jewish community. His past [5] affiliation with Palestinian groups, his flip-flop on an “Undivided Jerusalem,” his coterie of [6] advisors who have made troubling comments regarding Israel or America Jews have given pause to some Jews, the vast majority of whom have voted Democratic in presidential elections.  The fact that partisan politics by Obama’s allies — and perhaps his own campaign — submarined an event in defense of both U.S. and Israeli interests will not go unnoticed. Many will ask: “Is bumping Palin off the stage more important than standing up to Ahmadinejad?” It seems so.

On a broader level, Obama’s claim to fame is his ability — how can we forget — to organize his community. His dismal failure here, indeed his role in wrecking a community protest, doesn’t speak well of his ability to bring people together for a common purpose.

And finally, to the extent this implicates Joe Biden, it adds fuel to the fire of burning discontent as to his selection as VP. This is not his only [7] faux pas with Jewish organizations, it should be noted. Just last month he got into a row with AIPAC which had to be quickly patched up.

Bluntly put, this is a mess. The group’s organizers, the liberal Jewish groups who thought it more important to “dis” Palin than Ahmadinejad, and the Obama camp, all look amateurish and misguided. The others have a lifetime to live this down — Obama has less than fifty days before Election Day.

So the question remains: How’s he going to fix it?

John R. Lott Jr. is a senior research scientist at the University of Maryland
Does John McCain represent a third Bush term? The Obama campaign claims the two are almost indistinguishable. It was the mantra during the Democratic convention, and it is the theme of new ads Barack Obama is running. The ads claim that McCain is “no maverick when he votes with Bush 90 percent of the time.”

This week Obama has begun a constant refrain that there is “not a dime worth of difference” between Bush’s and McCain’s views. It is a consistent theme of Democratic pundits on talk shows.

Is this the same McCain who drove Republicans nuts on campaign finance, the environment, taxes, torture, immigration and more? Where has McCain not crossed swords with his own party?

As it’s being used, the 90 percent figure, from Congressional Quarterly, is nonsensical. As Washington Post congressional reporter Jonathan Weisman explained, “The vast majority of those votes are procedural, and virtually every member of Congress votes with his or her leadership on procedural motions.”

Obama might want to be a little careful with these attacks, as the same measure has him voting with Democrats 97 percent of the time.

Fortunately, a number of organizations on the left and right provide useful evaluations on how congressmen and senators vote each year. These conservative and liberal groups pick the votes they care about most and figure out how often lawmakers match up with their positions.

Well-known organizations that rank congressional voting include the American Conservative Union on the right, Americans for Democratic Action on the left, and the nonpartisan National Journal in the middle. The League of Conservation Voters also ranks politicians from an environmentalist position.

These groups’ rankings from 2001 to 2007 paint fairly similar pictures, putting McCain to the left of most Republican senators and to the right of most Democratic senators – though usually much closer to the average Republican.

The American Conservative Union finds that the average Republican senator voted conservatively 85 percent of the time, and that the average Democrat voted conservatively 13 percent of the time. McCain voted conservatively 74 percent of the time.

Although it’s at the opposite end of the political spectrum, Americans for Democratic Action essentially agreed. It found that the average Republican senator voted liberally just over 12 percent of the time, and the average Democrat voted liberally 89 percent of the time. McCain voted liberally 24 percent of the time – twice as frequently as the average Republican.

McCain missed too many votes campaigning in 2007 to be included in the National Journal ranking for that year, but it found that he voted conservatively 59.4 percent of the time from 2001 to 2006.

According to the League of Conservation Voters, John McCain is the ultimate centrist. While the average Republican supported liberal environmentalist positions 13 percent of the time, and the average Democrat supported them 76 percent of the time, McCain’s 44 percent put him in the middle.

Another way to look at these numbers is to see how many of the 99 other senators voted more conservatively than McCain. In 2006, these four groups ranked McCain as the 47th, 46th, 44th and 51st most conservative member of the Senate, respectively. Surely, McCain is not nearly as liberal as the typical Democratic senator, but rankings from the left, middle and right find he is more liberal than the vast majority of Republicans in the Senate.

What issues put McCain well to the left of the average Senate Republican? The American Conservative Union lists a number of specific votes on which he differed from most other Republicans, including:

Taxes. He opposed reducing capital-gains tax rates, eliminating the inheritance tax and lowering income-tax rates.

Environment. He opposed drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, supported compliance with the Kyoto global-warming treaty, supported requiring businesses to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, favored stricter mercury-emission rules for power plants, and supported stricter fuel-efficiency standards.

Other regulations. McCain consistently supported stricter campaign-finance regulations and voted to mandate that handguns be sold only with locks.

A number of these votes were closely contested. Some of McCain’s votes led to a 50-50 deadlock in the Senate, requiring Vice President Cheney to break the tie.

In contrast to the very liberal ratings given to Obama, the interest groups find that there are about as many senators to McCain’s right as there are to his left. This might not endear him to many conservatives or liberals. But it is a real distortion to claim he is a Bush clone.

E-mail John R. Lott Jr. at jlott@umd.edu.

On Friday, a Sacramento Superior Court jury convicted Jorge Padilla Ruiz of two murders he committed two years ago in North Sacramento in a case that prosecutors said was motivated solely by racial hatred.