“I have served as a Member of Congress for more than 11 years. Throughout my tenure in Congress, I seem to evoke memory loss, especially from certain police officers who claim not to be able to recognize my face while I go to work everyday, representing the people of Georgia’s 4th Congressional District …

“Why my face is continually unrecognizable can only be answered by these offending police officers. Capitol Hill Police are given face recognition instructions as a part of their official training. Capitol Hill Police are required to recognize, greet, and distinguish Members of Congress as a part of their official role and responsibilities. In fact, according to the US Capitol Police, their mission is to protect and support the Congress in meeting its constitutional responsibilities. The US Capitol Police mission statement makes no distinction about selective application of its mission depending upon whether a Member of Congress is black, woman, or has a new hairstyle.

“But, honestly, this incident is not about wearing a congressional pin or changing my hairstyle.

“It is true that I have changed my hairstyle. It is true that at the time I was not wearing my pin. But many Members of Congress aren’t wearing their pins today. Just in the last hour, at least eight Members of Congress have been spotted speaking from the well of the House without their pins and even more have been seen on the Hill today not wearing their Congressional pin. How many of them were stopped by Capitol Hill Police? Do I have to contact the police every time I change my hairstyle? How do we account for the fact that when I wore my braids every day for 11 years, I still faced this problem, primarily from certain white police officers?

“This morning at approximately 8:57 a.m., I was going to a Budget Committee meeting due to start at 9 a.m. I was rushing to my meeting when a white police officer yelled to me. He approached me, body-blocked me, physically touching me. I used my arm to get him off of me. I told him not to touch me several times. He asked for my ID and I showed it to him. He then let me go and I proceeded to my meeting and I assume that the police officer resumed his duties.”

“I have counseled with the Sergeant-at-Arms and Acting Assistant Chief Thompson several times before and counseled with them again on today’s incident. I offered also to counsel with the offending police officer. I have agreed to try to remember to wear my pin and to notify Capitol Hill police every time I change my hairstyle.”

As on-line commentator Larry Chin explains, this was all to no avail. “The McKinney “slapping incident” has become 24-hour fodder for Fox News and other right-wing Bush psychopaths. Right-wing talk show host Neal Boortz called McKinney “ghetto trash.” The worthless Dennis Hastert rambled about McKinney being a “security” risk. The supremely criminal Tom DeLay, on his way out in disgrace, could not help calling McKinney an “arrogant racist” in his parting shot. Virtually every mainstream news broadcast, from national to local, have repeated the Republican sound bites, exclusively.

“More telling is the fact that a day after the incident, not one Democrat came to McKinney’s defense. Not one.

“This worthless and brutally corrupt neoliberal faction, led by the shameless Nancy Pelosi (no friend of McKinney’s) and the power-mongering Democratic Leadership Council, want McKinney muzzled as badly as the Bush forces do. They spent the better part of the days accusing McKinney of creating a distraction.

“Is the targeted intimidation of a sitting member of Congress a distraction? Or is the shameless deception of the Democrats in this “election” year the real distraction from the truly brutal realities of the “war on terrorism” (which the Democrats enthusiastically support), and a planetary Peak Oil/natural resource crisis, the real distraction? As the Democrats shamelessly claw, shill and collude for their seats on this sinking Titanic called the American empire, they are more than happy to toss an outspoken outsider and maverick to the wolves. It is these Democrats who deserve a good slapping.

“Today, McKinney issued an apology, even though she has nothing to apologize for. The African-American community knows it.

“As Wilbert Tatum wrote in a blistering editorial in the New York Amsterdam News, titled “Cynthia McKinney as role model”:

“Is this country fair? You’d better bet your ass it isn’t. Must Blacks do something out of the normal political process to express their rage, anger and resentment? Once more, you had better bet your ass we should because we are faced with the most hostile government in recent memory, not only a government that is rabid and greedy in the worst kind of sense but a government exploiting a leader who is little short of crazy.

“Cynthia McKinney and Maxine Waters and the other Black women in Congress had better watch out. If they have been targeted, as many of us believe that they have, there must come a defense for them. It must not necessarily come from the Black Caucus or the Black men in the Black Caucus, but it must come from somewhere.

“The Black men are afraid for their political lives. The Black women are afraid that their constituents will lose their lives if they are not protected by those who are supposed to represent them – two different agendas made necessary by this peculiar institution of slavery which we have inherited.

“Retaliation … though foolish it may be, is the only way that is going to give us immediate satisfaction. And don’t we really need satisfaction now? We have lost in every quarter, and the current administration is taking out the losses in the other quarters that remain in this administration. Think about the fate available to us in America now and decide which way you are going to go between now and Election Day 2006. As Edward R. Murrow would have said, ‘Good night and good luck.’ “

Me too! She should be hte next Dem nominee fro President.

Marc Cooper is good – critical of McKinney but where is the alternative plan??? Typical libdemcom cowardice failure to provide new ideas. Don’t you know all your fault?

I also blame libs for Darfur and the Mongols and the death of Jesus. Oh wait that was the Jews understandable that some hate them even though it is wrong?

Freedom!

Assuming your “statistics” are correct, except for for your first asterisk (which involves accusations of spousal abuse…) and fifth asterisk (assault), all of these alleged acts of wrongdoing are less serious than punching a security guard.

Still, in the absence of cameras and an eyewitness, we don’t know how hard the security person grabbed her arm. As comically unfounded as it may have been, she may have been struck with sincere fear.

A true and wise leader, when asked by an officer to stop, would turn around, comply with instruction, properly introduce themselves and THANK the officer for doing his job.

Better to make a friend, than an issue.

*29 have been accused of spousal abuse
*7 have been arrested for fraud
*19 have been accused of writing bad checks
*117 have directly or indirectly bankrupted at least 2 businesses
*3 have done time for assault
*71 cannot get a credit card due to bad credit
*14 have been arrested on drug-related charges
*8 have been arrested for shoplifting
*21 are currently defendants in lawsuits
*84 have been arrested for drunk driving in the last year Can you guess which organization this is?

GIVE UP YET?????

IT IS THE 535 MEMBERS OF THE UNITED STATES CONGRESS. The same group of Idiots that crank out hundreds of new laws each year designed to keep the rest of us in line.

The NOSY NATION gotta do this story!

Maybe, Cynthia McKinney is actually a step above the rest!

My view of McKinney is strongly influenced by former Congressman Andy Jacobs, Jr. He represented Indianapolis for about 36 years, and was himself a maverick, though considerably more conservative than McKinney on all but war and peace issues. He loved Cynthia McKinney, and was anxious to tell you so. Andy is brilliant, fair-minded and pretty much always right, so Cynthia McKinney has a lot of credit with me.

I think it is good to have someone whose antennae are sensitive, most would say too sensitive, to injustice and evil. She may well be wrong about this Capitol policeman’s reasons for stopping her. She certainly was acting impolitically in making a racial issue out of it. But I don’t think she is a “wack job” and I don’t think anything she has said about the incident invalidates her perceptions on the issues and more than Sen. Robert Byrd’s similar response invalidated the brilliant speech he gave advocating against a war against Iraq.

If the Nation no longer wishes to be associated with Cynthia McKinney, or finds her to be irresponsible, its position is appropriate. I, however, think it is unfortunate that one of the braver and more perceptive voices in the wilderness will be less widely heard.

It’s easy to show someone is insane if you only characterize them and don’t allow others to see their actual words.

Censorship on this list? Seems so.

Mitchel Cohen

2) Even if McKinney had struck the cop, she may twell have believed she was being attacke.d Before the story took off painting her as a villain, the capital police apologized to her.

3) As noted, while she is kind of out there (though Cointelpro was and probably is real,) she is an effective and strong legislator, good on foreign policy and has high grades from labor and progressive groups.

4) That this was a setup was entirely possible. That Ari Berman and Marc Cooper would slander her without conceding that she is innocent until proven guilty- and that they are ignoring context – speaks volumes. Especially Berman, who is not known normally for this type of slander, and who I cordially communicated with over a piece I wrote for Cpunch a few years back, should be ashamed of himself.

At least the Security Guards we pay to secure our government buildings had sense enough to accommodate their ‘special’ needs by providing a special line that allows them to bypass the magnetometer as well as any contact with ‘those people’ in line that pay them to represent them.

In addition, each special Security Guard in their special line is given special training to identify by site all over 400 of our special people so they don’t have have to identify themselves at all, a great time saver and ego builder. They apparently agreed to assist their special guards memory by agreeing to wear a special pin on their clothing to identify themselves as special. But as we have learned, sometimes they don’t wear it and sometime at the same time they have camouflaged themselves in a wacko hairdo.

This “McKinney Incident’ guard had the unfortunate luck to not only not recognize Ms McKinney’s…..pardon me, Congresswoman McKinney’s… I’m so sorry, as a member of a special class, but added insult to ego injury by also failing to recognize her two other special classes she quickly pointed to , a black and a woman.

She didn’t have the opportunity, but it’s not difficult to figure out which way *she* would have voted on the Iraq War.

I’ll give you a hint. It’s the opposite of John Kerry, Hillary Clinton or the other “sensible” and “rational” Democrats of whose ranks the “white middle-class liberals” reading this blog and dissing McKinney will likely be busy supporting in the next election.

More “fools” please!

There won’t be anymore. Some day I will tell u why. It’s about the above turgid and tedious postings.

Let’s check out what another Nation columnist, John Nichols, wrote about McKinney a year and a half ago:

“McKinney was battered throughout the early months of the 2002 election season by right-wing political operatives and their allies in major media – as well as conservative Democrats – because she dared to ask tough questions about what members of the Bush administration knew before Sept. 11, 2001, about the threat of terrorist attacks.

“As we now know, McKinney’s questions were troublingly appropriate – since it has turned out that Rice and other Bush aides knew more than a month before the assaults on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon that members of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida network were determined to launch devastating attacks on the United States.

“McKinney’s “crime” was to ask the right questions at the wrong time – i.e., before official Washington had decided it was appropriate to examine how and why the Bush administration had failed to respond to pleas from former White House anti-terrorism czar Richard Clarke and others for a more aggressive response to an increasingly obvious threat. Her punishment was ridicule, political abandonment and defeat for re-election in the 2002 Georgia Democratic congressional primary.”

She has stood alone as the only member of Congress to seriously cross-examine Rumsfeld about WMDs in Iraq. She fought to defund Project Prometheus, the nuclear propulsion rocket. And of course she sharply questions the U.S. government’s official conspiracy story concerning 9-11, and is demanding answers.

As for me, I think Cynthia McKinney is great.

Mitchel Cohen
Brooklyn Greens / Green Party

The worst part of all is that, much like the right enjoys doing, she is cheapening the concept of racism by haphazardly throwing the term around like some crazy trump card. She does a disservice to the its victims in ways that I hope she realizes one day. Forunately, the state of Georgia can count on John Lewis as being a much more honorable champion than this unhinged woman.

http://www.democracyarsenal.org/2006/04/karen_hughes_vi.html