Saturday, March 22, 2008

U.S. gov't to appeal ruling on classified material in AIPAC trial

Friday afternoon is not the best time for major news developments,
but in the case of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)
trial it seems to have become a habit.

The four-day exercise, codenamed "Juniper Falcon" was part of a standing
agreement between the two strategic allies to hold regular joint training to
boost "interoperability, understanding and cooperation" a military statement
released on Thursday said.

The statement stressed that the exercise, which ended on Wednesday, had been
planned a year in advance and was not related to actual events.



Class Action Lawsuit Debated Against Medical Centers
As more and more people get tested for hepatitis and HIV, the courts are trying to figure out how to handle all of the lawsuits now filed against the clinic that put patients at risk.

Some 40,000 people were urged to be tested after it was found the clinics regularly reused dirty syringes and vials.


Witnesses: Teen killed by police had his hands up

Witnesses said Thursday that Jose Luis Buenrostro-Gonzalez, 15, had his hands in the air and was unarmed when he was fatally shot by Oakland police Wednesday.

Will Joe Lieberman be John McCain's Assisted Living Caretaker and Vice-President as They Bomb Iran?
In case you've been so caught up in the battle royale of the Democratic primaries, Joe Lieberman has been escorting John McCain around Iraq and Israel, acting as his assisted living caretaker.

Not only has Lieberman once or twice bailed McCain out of his confusion between Sunnis and Shiites, he most recently saved McCain from his equating the Jewish Holiday of Purim with Halloween while jaunting around Israel.



Posted for a friend .

My friend is in danger of loosing her dogs due to money issues.
Read more here

If you can donate, click below. Thank You!
www.linktoit.com/dogs -or-
www.linkto-it.com/dogs

Friday, March 21, 2008

passport breach

Passport firm CEO donated to Lieberman, Clinton;

Rice says sorry to Obama for breaches

The Associated Press later identified Stanley, Inc. as the Virginia-based contractor whose two employees were terminated. One prescient blogger who guessed correctly that Stanley was the contractor in question noted that its CEO is a GOP donor:

...[O]ne thing that would add to the appearance of impropriety is that CEO Nolan has, according to the Open Secrets database, been a campaign contributor to Sen. Joe Lieberman, a leading supporter of Obama's Republican adversary John McCain. In March 2005 Nolan gave $1,000 to Lieberman's reelection campaign.

The NBC News 'Deep Background' blog has more on Stanley and its CEO, including the revelation that Nolan "gave $1,000 to Sen. Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign on Feb. 20, 2008."



Clinton friend may be involved in passport breach

A State Department official in charge of the department during two of the three breaches into the passport files of Sen. Barack Obama has a direct tie to Bill and Hillary Clinton and department officials are investigating whether she furnished information to Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.
Corporate Media's Virtual Blackout on Iraq Atrocity Hearings
Given the common media rhetoric of "supporting the troops" to ignore these same troops when they speak out about the horrors of the war is unconscionable. On the fifth anniversary of the Iraq War, it is particularly important that the media reverse this silence, and include the voices of the vets who are speaking out about their experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan in national news coverage.

Comcast Cable Boxes Cameras to Start Watching You?
If you have some tinfoil handy, now might be a good time to fashion a hat. At the Digital Living Room conference today, Gerard Kunkel, Comcast's senior VP of user experience, told me the cable company is experimenting with different camera technologies built into devices so it can know who's in your living room.

The homelessness situation has grown so rapidly in the United States that certain cities are issuing color-coded wristbands.

What is the real story behind his days as a POW? The U.S. Veteran Dispatch had an article in June of 1996 entitled "POW Songbird McCain Wrongly Described As A Hero." It recounted numerous instances where John McCain violated the Military Coda of Conduct, which specifically orders American personnel to give the enemy no information other than name, rank, serial number, and date of birth. It requires that they accept no favors from the enemy, and to make no written or oral statement disloyal to the United States.

The fact is, in exchange for better medical treatment, McCain violated this code four days after being captured on Oct. 26, 1967. In a U.S. News and World Report interview dated May 14, 1973, two months after he was released, McCain admitted that he exchanged military information in exchange for spending six weeks in a hospital normally reserve for North Vietnamese Military officers.


Teenager Dies After Police In Charlotte Use Taser

Police said an argument escalated between Turner and one of his supervisors at a Food Lion on Prosperity Church Road. Officers said the teen assaulted a store manager by throwing an object after officers arrived on scene.

Police released a statement reading, "[Turner] was highly agitated and refused all verbal commands and began walking toward the officer." At that point, the officer used his Taser on Turner.


Israel & the Media: The Real Anti-Semites
First off, let's get something straight once and for all...Israel is neither a religion nor a people; it is a politically established nation. Opinions, discussions, reports, analyses or commentaries about Israel have nothing to do with "Jews," "Jewish" people or "Judaism!" Once you understand this you can now understand how anyone who stifles accurate commentary about Israel by slapping the commentator with an anti-Semitism label is using, and may I say exploiting the Jewish people by directly connecting all Jewish people with the actions of the State of Israel.


Video: Police Violence At March 20 San Francisco Anti-War Protests

You are now accessing what our Department of Defense (DOD) considers an "enemy weapons system". The Internet in its present form is rife with "uncontrolled information", also known as free speech, therefore directly opposing the Pentagon's goals. The main purpose of this article is not to announce new developments, but rather, to encourage reflection on DOD "progress", and where it might land us.

Royal Dutch Shell has been quietly working with Iraq's oil ministry over the past two years, advising it on how to increase the production of two oilfields. Under an agreement struck after the 2003 invasion, no one from the company, Europe's largest oil group, has set foot in the troubled country; instead, monthly face-to-face meetings with the oil ministry have been held in Amman, the Jordanian capital, and weekly contact has been maintained by video-link.

White House documents reveal that Hillary Clinton lied to voters about her opposition to a trade pact blamed in industrial states for killing jobs, Barack Obama's campaign said Thursday.

Turner went to Carolinas Medical Center-University, but he died a short time later.

Video: WeAreChange confronts Carl Cameron on 9/11




http://linktoit.com/wac



Bush on the Start of the Iraq War: "I feel good!"

The image “http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/IMAGES/bush_speech.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Minutes before President Bush's solemn announcement
that the US military were in action against Iraq he vigorously
pumped his fist and declared: "I feel good". [Mirror]

His subsequent actions were mistakenly fed out early and he

was unaware that his antics were broadcast live on the BBC

and several other satellite news channels.

Download video

(2.8 MB RealVideo file)

from whatreallyhappened.com


Election Reality TV - Butch & Hoppy: The Lies Take Hold

This video provides some of the back-story for the discovery of a potentially devastating method of rigging audits, recounts and mail-in votes. While this particular segment took place in New Hampshire, what we learned about chain of custody and a previously unknown attack vector may have affected all states in the primaries. A project funded and produced by Black Box Voting, these videos show a unique collaboration of citizen volunteers who set out to coordinate and share videotaped evidence.


Thursday, March 20, 2008

BUSTED: PIC Rev. Wright was CLINTON Guest @ White House

https://post.craigslist.org/imagepreview/n/010401010310011607200803207c2ab32b8f05ed364200d473.jpg
better pic and more info here

http://columbus.craigslist.org/pol/613361581.html
Newly Released Records:
Clinton Pardons Fugitive Marc Rich
After His Wife Makes Large Contribution
to Hillary's Senate Campaign

Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, announced today that it has obtained the official pardon application submitted to the Clinton White House by attorney Jack Quinn December 11, 2000, on behalf of former fugitive Marc Rich, who fled the United States in 1983 to avoid prosecution on racketeering, wire fraud and tax evasion charges. The fugitive Rich was one of about 140 criminals who received pardons from Bill Clinton in the last hours of his administration on January 20, 2001. The pardon application was made available in response to a Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request made on August 8, 2006.
Kram and Lynn, running their respective candidates' competitive campaigns in the Jewish communities this presidential season, shared a room and a coming of age in 1998 as summer college interns at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
I have been following this criminal prosecution in the Federal Court in Alexandria, Va where I used to practice. I call it the Franklin case because of Col Franklin who worked for Feith in DoD. The defendants are trying to prove that the information received from Franklin was a routine delivery to AIPAC from DoD. That is why it is on appeal and being held up until after Bush et al are out of office.

2nd

81-Year-Old Man Shoots, Kills Home Invasion Suspect
Photographer wanted to expose 'what the military was allowing to happen'
Sleepwalking into a Food Nightmare

Warning signs show that the era of cheap groceries
and easily affordable food is rapidly coming to a close.
Prosecutors Want To Garnish Traficant's Pension To Pay Fines


Prosecutors want to tap into former Congressman Jim Traficant's pension to help pay about $93,000 he still owes in fines from his bribery conviction.

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

officer who shot and killed Tarika Wilson

Lima Community reacts to “injustice” from both sides…

The community of Lima, Ohio appears to be split when it comes to what happened yesterday with Sergeant Chavalia, 52, being indicted by a special Allen County grand jury for negligent homicide, which is a first-degree misdemeanor punishable by up to 180 days in jail and a $1,000 fine, and negligent assault, a third-degree misdemeanor that carries a maximum sentence of 60 days in jail and a $500 fine. LimaOhio.com has several articles on what happened, including community reaction:

Black leaders had wanted high-level felony charges in the case against the officer who shot and killed Tarika Wilson, 26, during a drug raid. They sat dismayed in an Allen County Common Pleas Court courtroom after a hearing in which Chavalia pleaded not guilty to the two charges. Many others in the packed courtroom shook their heads in anger, as one man said, “We shouldn’t have quit marching,” and another said, “So that’s what a black life is worth.”

Read More Here from glasscityjungle.com


McCain backs Jerusalem
as 'Israeli capital'


Big surprise here!

Building to Continue in East Jerusalem...

Israel's Olmert: Building to Continue in East Jerusalem



A partial list of United Nations Resolutions against Israel

United Nations Resolution 127: " . . . 'recommends' Israel suspends it's 'no-man's zone' in Jerusalem".
United Nations Resolution 162: " . . . 'urges' Israel to comply with UN decisions".
United Nations Resolution 250: " . . . 'calls' on Israel to refrain from holding military parade in Jerusalem".
United Nations Resolution 251: " . . . 'deeply deplores' Israeli military parade in Jerusalem in defiance of Resolution 250".
United Nations Resolution 252: " . . . 'declares invalid' Israel's acts to unify Jerusalem as Jewish capital".
United Nations Resolution 267: " . . . 'censures' Israel for administrative acts to change the status of Jerusalem".
United Nations Resolution 271: " . . . 'condemns' Israel's failure to obey UN resolutions on Jerusalem".
United Nations Resolution 298: " . . . 'deplores' Israel's changing of the status of Jerusalem".
United Nations Resolution 446: " . . . 'determines' that Israeli settlements are a 'serious obstruction' to peace and calls on Israel to abide by the Fourth Geneva Convention".
United Nations Resolution 452: " . . . 'calls' on Israel to cease building settlements in occupied territories".
United Nations Resolution 465: " . . . 'deplores' Israel's settlements and asks all member states not to assist Israel's settlements program".
United Nations Resolution 471: " . . . 'expresses deep concern' at Israel's failure to abide by the Fourth Geneva Convention".
United Nations Resolution 476: " . . . 'reiterates' that Israel's claim to Jerusalem are 'null and void'".
United Nations Resolution 478: " . . . 'censures (Israel) in the strongest terms' for its claim to Jerusalem in its 'Basic Law'".
United Nations Resolution 673: " . . . 'deplores' Israel's refusal to cooperate with the United Nations.
CHECK OUT THIS BLOG!!!!



FROM MY BROWN EYED VIEW


A sistah like myself moves around all time looking at this world we live in.
I like looking in the past, the present, and into the future.
There is always something to focus in on.
This is the space where I plan to share my visions.


msladydeborah



Monday, March 17, 2008

BUSTED : Story behind the 2004 Election lockdown

Breaking > 12 20 08 > Michael Connell DEAD!


Cincinnati Enquirer - Mar 16, 2008
BY JON CRAIG

It’s one of the lingering mysteries of the 2004 presidential election.

In a key county in Southwest Ohio – amid vague references to “homeland security” – officials locked everyone else out of the board of elections as they counted punch-card ballots. President Bush emerged with more than 72 percent of the votes in Warren County, helping him narrowly win Ohio – and a second term.

Secrecy surrounding the count galvanized bloggers, anti-Bush activists and conspiracy theorists from around the globe. To this day, the lockdown is cited as evidence of an election stolen from Sen. John Kerry and the Democrats.

Now with another presidential election coming, The Enquirer, through public-records requests and interviews, can unravel the story of what happened on the night of Nov. 2, 2004 – and how officials tried to spin the event afterwards.

Read more documents


The Enquirer has learned:

- A casual conversation about terrorism between the county emergency services director and a friendly FBI agent in a parking lot may have been the final trigger for the lockdown.

Warren County’s Administration Building – which houses the Board of Elections offices – was shuttered to the public shortly after the polls closed. The lockdown came on top of government warnings issued to elections officials nationwide, stating al-Qaida might attempt terrorist attacks on polling places.

- In the weeks after the election, county officials were bombarded with hundreds of angry e-mails and hit with intensifying media scrutiny from across the country.
“Stop destroying our democracy!” wrote a North Myrtle Beach, S.C. woman.
One e-mail came from an angry overseas voter living in the United Kingdom.

- As national criticism mounted in the following weeks, a county commissioner was persuaded to gut a press release, while trying to align conflicting versions of what happened.

The county sheriff suggested the official leave out references to the FBI, warning,

“This is inviting the hornets out of the nest.’’

No conclusive evidence has ever emerged showing the lockdown affected the vote count, which was monitored by Democratic and Republican observers.
But on the Web, it became one of the oft-cited “irregularities” in the 2004 election in Ohio.

“You can Google it and get 10,000 versions” of what happened, says Pat South, then and now president of the Warren County Board of Commissioners. She acknowledged this month that the county made a mistake in locking the building and miscommunicating as to when, how and who recommended it.
“2004? Hindsight? Wrong move,” she says.

LOOKING BACK

The fall of 2004 was a time of election fervor – and terrorism paranoia. President Bush and challenger John Kerry criss-crossed Ohio. Fear-provoking campaign ads filled mailboxes and airwaves. Meanwhile, the nation was placed on “orange’’ alert – the second-highest level – several times.

Federal officials blanketed the nation with terrorism warnings in September and October, prompting 18 Ohio counties to activate their Emergency Operations Centers on Nov. 2, 2004. Forty-eight other Ohio county emergency centers were on standby Election Day in case of an emergency, according to state records.

Among the warnings to county officials was a four-page Oct. 4 memo from the Ohio Army National Guard that stated: “Homeland Security Department has indicated al-Qaida is plotting to disrupt US elections. Potential exists that disruptions could occur at campaign stops and/or polling places in the upcoming elections. Many polling places are located in churches, schools, community centers, local and state government facilities.”

While no terror incidents occurred anywhere in the United States on Election Day 2004, Ohio Emergency Management Agency incident reports, obtained last month by The Enquirer, show a “terrorism threat rumor’’ in Tuscarawas County and complaints about people of “Middle Eastern descent’’ in Allen and Lorain counties.

The Lorain County incident turned out to be an international monitoring group photographing a polling place in Grafton. The Allen County incident was reported to the Defense Department as suspicious people in a gold minivan with California plates. It turned out to be four Latino males doing a film project, according to state EMA records.

In Warren County, Lebanon police, two county pick-up trucks and a bomb-sniffing dog helped guard the Administration Building on Election Day.

Board of elections officials compiled a list of people approved for after-hours access to the Administration Building. The list didn’t include reporters or other approved ballot-counting observers.

Among those locked out were an Enquirer reporter, a TV reporter, and a stringer from the Associated Press. The AP had stringers at all 88 boards of elections, and only in Warren County were they not allowed in. James Lee, spokesman for then Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, told the Enquirer then that no other county had similar restrictions Election Night.

“We weren’t trying to hide anything from them,’’ said then-Warren County Board of Elections Director Susan Johnson, who now works at the Clinton County Board of Elections. “It had never ever been the practice (for the media) to be in the room with the counting anyway.’’

The building’s front doors were locked shortly after polls closed at 7:30 p.m.
Even Jeff Ruppert, Warren County counsel for the Kerry-Edwards campaign, was initially denied admission before presenting credentials. Ruppert told reporters he observed nothing inappropriate at the board of elections.

The Ohio Republican Party’s election night rally in Columbus exploded in cheers at 12:41 a.m. Wednesday as Fox News Channel became the first to called Ohio for Bush. NBC later called the state as well.

But Kerry spokeswoman Mary Beth Cahill issued this statement at 1:30 a.m.: “The vote count in Ohio has not been completed. There are more than 250,000 remaining votes.”

FBI, OR NOT?

Frank R. Young, director of the county’s Department of Emergency Services, said in an interview last week that he recommended the lockdown.

He said it was inspired, in part, by a conversation he had with an FBI agent in October, while planning security for an unrelated public event. That conversation took place in the parking lot of the Hamilton Township Administration Building.

Young asked the FBI agent how seriously to take the threats. The agent – whom Young would not identify – told him: “We take it very seriously. There are factions in this country that want to go after – and see disruption of whatever it is – whether it’s an election or whatever.’’

Young said the conversation “was not necessarily what prompted the actions… We just wanted to have some extra protection around the building, because you never know what kind of a nut is out there.’’

But Warren County Sheriff Tom Ariss has a different recollection of decisions leading to the lockdown: “My understanding is the FBI was never contacted. They never talked to anybody.”

The FBI looked into whether anyone had told Warren County authorities about a threat to the board of elections, FBI spokesman Michael Brooks said last week.
“We concluded that there was no information given to Warren County of an imminent terrorist threat to that county or to Southern Ohio,’’ Brooks said. “None of our agents did anything wrong (or) advised of any type of any terrorist threat or anything like that.’’

THE PRESS RELEASE

In fact, Ariss advised South, the commission president, to leave out references to the FBI or Young in a press release South was preparing amidst the hubbub over the lockdown that month.

In a Nov. 15, 2004, e-mail to South, county Prosecutor Rachel Hutzel and others, Ariss wrote: “This is inviting the hornets out of the nest. I still like the press release that was made up on Friday.’’

South complied, cutting more than half the detail from her draft press release including this line: “While there was never any specific terrorist threat or warning directed against the County Administration Building or any venue in Warren County, we were adequately convinced that if any attempts were going to be made to interfere with the election process, Warren County was one of three counties ranked at highest risk.’’

“I’m pretty sure that that was a ranking from emergency management,’’ South said Thursday. She thought it came from Young via the FBI.

In an interview last week, Ariss insisted that Young “would never talk to anybody (from the FBI) in a parking lot, because they wouldn’t know who the hell he was. But I better keep my mouth shut,” he said with a laugh. “I won’t even touch it. Just knowing the FBI, they would have no reason to be up here. . . Had there been any concern, it should have been addressed to us because we are the provider of security on the county buildings.’’

“Well, he wasn’t there,’’ Young said of the sheriff.

“It’s terribly disconcerting,’’ Daniel J. Hoffheimer, a Cincinnati attorney, said of the discrepancies about whether the FBI was involved or not.

Hoffheimer, who was Kerry’s legal counsel in Ohio, said, “Here you’ve got two people … who have two different recollections, or two different stories about what happened, and at least, for now, no way of resolving which is the truth.’’

AS OHIO GOES. . .

After returns were certified, Bush won Ohio by 118,601 votes out of more than 5.6 million cast statewide. The Republican president beat Kerry by nearly 42,000 votes in Warren County, including a 14,000-vote boost early Wednesday morning that prompted television news networks to project him as the winner in Ohio.

Bush won Ohio by 50.8 to 48.7 percent and Warren County by 72.3 to 27.7 percent.

In a federal lawsuit and subsequent books, Richard Hayes Phillips, a scientist from Canton, N.Y., and Columbus attorneys Cliff Arnebeck and Robert J. Fitrakis, among others, documented what they described as abnormalities in the county’s punch-card ballot counts, including high numbers of Republicans who voted in favor of gay marriage in Southwest Ohio – contrary to elsewhere in the state – and supporting a Democratic candidate for chief justice of the Ohio Supreme Court. They contend the anomalies indicate ballots were mishandled, miscounted or tampered with, and that the Warren County “lockdown’’ allowed this to happen undetected. Their lawsuit is pending in U.S. District Court in Columbus.

Hoffheimer said no one may ever know the full story of what happened in Warren County, or Ohio that night.

“But Bush still carried the state by a large enough margin that it seems unlikely … that even with all of these errors that Kerry could have won Ohio,’’ Hoffheimer said.
Changes recommended by South and others are now in place: A window for media and other observers was installed overlooking the boardroom where vote tabulations take place, according to current Board of Elections Director Michael E. Moore. And three polling precincts that had been in the county administration building in 2004 have been removed.

Warren County will never lock down its administration building during an election again “unless there was well-documented, unquestionable’’ cause, South promised.

“Could things have gone smoother here? Yup, we learned some lessons,’’ Young said. “It’s just like any fire, flood or tornado that you would have. Sometimes you sit back and you say, ‘What could we have done better to approach that situation?’ I learned to stay the hell away from it…. The only time (since 2004) I had anything to do with the polling place is when I walked in to vote. That was it.’’







Sunday, March 16, 2008

Ohio's voting machines
are now an official crime scene


At least 15 touch-screen voting machines that produced
improbable numbers in Ohio's 2006 statewide election
are now under double-lock in an official crime scene.
And the phony "Homeland Security Alert" used by
Republicans to build up George W. Bush's 2004 vote count
in a key southwestern Ohio county has come under new
scrutiny.

State fails to heed warning

By Randy Ellis
Staff Writer
© Copyright 2008, The Oklahoman

POTEAU — DHS was warned.

"I called them crying several times. I begged them not to put my children with those people,” said Melissa Castillo, 26, of Fort Smith, Ark.

"They're both awful people.”

DHS ignored the warnings.

Castillo's 4-year-old son, JaJuan Flowers, is now dead.

The boy's stepmother, Maria Torres-Vasquez, is charged with second-degree murder in his death.

His father, Beltan Vasquez, is serving a 12-year prison sentence for molesting another child in the home.

The Oklahoman looked into JaJuan's Dec. 11, 2006, death as part of its continuing investigation into children who have died or been abused in Oklahoma Department of Human Services custody. DHS spokesman George Johnson said it would be inappropriate for him to comment on why employees made the decisions they did in JaJuan's case.

‘What did DHS know?'
The cries of an anguished mother were not the only warnings Oklahoma Department of Human Services workers ignored when they placed Castillo's two children in the Vasquez home in 2006, records reveal.

They weren't even the strongest.

Because the Vasquez home was located across the eastern Oklahoma border in Arkansas, Oklahoma DHS workers had to ask their Arkansas counterparts to do a foster care home study.

Arkansas workers rejected the home.

Vasquez, 39, was an illegal immigrant, had been unemployed for more than a year and already had seven children in his home, Oklahoma child welfare workers were told.

Vasquez did not have a Social Security number, so a nationwide criminal background check could not be obtained, the report said.

The Arkansas officials also reported that Vasquez had been arrested on a domestic battery allegation in Arkansas two years earlier.

Oklahoma DHS workers already knew that. In 2004, an Arkansas police detective had called to inform them Vasquez had been arrested on a complaint of domestic violence against his then-girlfriend. The detective made the call because the girlfriend said Vasquez had "threatened to kill JaJuan's Oklahoma child welfare worker.”

Stepmom also a risk
Vasquez's 34-year-old wife also posed a risk.

Torres-Vasquez had a 1996 misdemeanor assault conviction out of Newport News, Va., records show.

It is unclear whether Oklahoma DHS workers knew about that conviction.

DHS workers knew something else, however.

Castillo's two children were taken away from her in 2002 because of injuries that JaJuan's half-sister, Jonesia Youngblood, allegedly suffered while in Torres-Vasquez's care, records show.

Jonesia came home with bruises on the side of her face and the back of one leg after Torres-Vasquez had been baby-sitting the two children, Castillo said.

Castillo said her sister, who lived in Oklahoma, then came to pick the children up for the weekend.

"I told her what happened, and she acted like it was no big deal,” Castillo said.

However, after her sister crossed the border back into Le Flore County, she took the children to an Oklahoma hospital and told doctors she thought the 21-month-old girl had been abused.

DHS was contacted and did an investigation.

Castillo and several other witnesses told DHS workers the bruises were sustained while Jonesia was in Torres-Vasquez's care, records reveal.

DHS then interviewed Torres-Vasquez, who "confirmed that three of the child's injuries had occurred while the children were in her home,” according to a child death review report prepared at The Oklahoman's request by the Oklahoma Commission on Children and Youth.

DHS made a "confirmed finding of physical abuse,” and stated the identity of the alleged perpetrator was "unknown.”

The children were taken away from their mother for "failure to protect” and "threat of harm.”

The children spent most of the next three years in the foster care of Castillo's Oklahoma sister, who wanted to adopt them.

Records show the sister spent those years on an emotional roller coaster as DHS vacillated between efforts to help her adopt the children and efforts to reunite the children with their biological parents.

In March 2006, the sister gave up, declaring, "(I) can't do this anymore,” records reveal. She turned the children back over to DHS.

DHS child welfare workers then focused their efforts on placing the children in the Vasquez home.

When Arkansas rejected the home as unsuitable, Oklahoma child welfare workers could have let the matter drop.

Instead, they worked out an arrangement.

Vasquez moved his family across the border from Arkansas to Arkoma, OK, and DHS placed JaJuan and Jonesia in his home.

Three months later, JaJuan was killed after the family had secretly moved back to Arkansas. He died from nonaccidental blunt force trauma to the head, the autopsy revealed.

Torres-Vasquez's second-degree murder trial is set for April 7 in Fort Smith, Ark.

‘Beyond negligence'
Castillo said she blames DHS "100 percent” for JaJuan's death.

Placing the children in the Vasquez home was a bizarre decision that "goes beyond negligence,” said Gary Buckles, Castillo's Poteau attorney.

DHS took Castillo's children away from her because she failed to protect them from her baby-sitter, then turned around and placed the children in the home of the baby sitter, he said.

Buckles said he tried to obtain a tape recording of the court hearing where the decision was approved, but the recording had "mysteriously disappeared.”

No DHS employees have been disciplined over the matter, he said.

In August, Buckles filed a wrongful death claim with DHS in which he asked the state for $20 million.

DHS rejected the claim by failing to respond.

Buckles said he expects to file a state lawsuit against the agency within the next few days and may file a federal lawsuit later.

Castillo, who is now married and lives with her husband and a 4-year-old son, said she is still pursuing efforts to get her daughter back.

In June, Arkansas child welfare workers did a home study on her Fort Smith home and rejected her, citing the earlier incident in which her children were taken away and her parental rights to JaJuan were terminated.

They said she was listed on "Arkansas criminal and central registries for several counts of failure to protect and neglect,” so placement of her daughter in her home would be inappropriate.

Castillo said Oklahoma DHS officials recently told her that if she would move to Oklahoma, she and her daughter might be reunited.

"I don't know who to trust,” she said. "I can't trust anybody. ... DHS has ruined my life and my children's lives. It ended the life of one of my children. It's a big nightmare I'll probably never wake up from.”

Contributing: Staff Writer Nolan Clay



http://newsok.com/article/3216744/?print=1

Writers Strike at Daily Kos? Try a Readers Strike.

The image “http://www.bradblog.com/Images/DailyKos_DontGoThere.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

"Alegre", a longtime Daily Kos diarist,
has called for a writers strike at the world's
largest supposedly-Progressive blog site,
due to what she says has become a
"hostile environment" for pro-Clinton supporters.
She writes that the place has become
"little more than an echo chamber with an
attitude that harkens back to the early days of
Dubbya’s administration - yer either
with us or yer a’gin us, heh!
We don't know whether that's the case or not,
since we haven't much followed what
goes on at dKos for years for our own
personal, if not necessarily unrelated,
reasons.

READ MORE!

ANTIOCH, THE US MILITARY

AND THE DAYTON DEVELOPMENT COALITION,

THE INSIDE STORY

Bush's Grandfather Traded with Nazis - Even After Pearl Harbor

Documents in National Archives Prove George W. Bush's
Grandfather Traded with Nazis - Even After Pearl Harbor

by John Buchanan (Exclusive to the New Hampshire Gazette)

READ MORE

News 03 16 08

Ohio Supreme Court scales back plan that limited public records

Man gets jail time for firing shotgun at Ron Paul sign

Advocates Balk at Renaming Ohio Hospital

When a Corporate Donation Raises Protests

Hormone Label Rule for Milk Divisive

Amtrak Studying Ohio

WASHINGTON'S SUPPRESSED PROSTITUTION CASE


ONE THING IS CLEAR about the so-called DC Madam - aka Deborah Jeane Palfrey - case: there is a stunning contrast between the lid being kept on the names of male clients in this matter and the interest of the media compared to the speed with which Eliot Spitzer name became notorious in a similar DC case. Admittedly the alleged charges for a prostitute in the DC Madam case were far less than in the Emperor's Club operation, but both were sufficient to attract the police.

Read More