Adolph Giuliani "Compassionate Conservatism" while he was mayor.
zeez
Protests, Lawsuits Stall Giuliani’s Homeless Crackdown
by Steven Wishnia
For years, an elderly black woman panhandled on the corner of
Second Avenue and East 11th Street, sitting by the wrought-iron fence
surrounding St. Mark’s Church, thanking passers-by whether or not they
dropped quarters into her paper coffee cup.
On the night before Thanksgiving, a young policewoman escorted her
away from her spot.
“I guess it’s illegal to be homeless now,” an observer commented.
“I guess it is,” she replied.
She hasn’t been back since.
The Thanksgiving street sweeps represented the most visible part
of the Giuliani administration’s latest crackdown on the homeless.
More far-reaching are its efforts to deny shelter to people who
violate public-assistance regulations. Its new rules were supposed to
go into effect Jan. 1, but have been held up by three separate
lawsuits. Hearings on the lawsuits were held early this month, and
decisions are expected soon.
The Giuliani administration issued its new regulations last
October, requiring all shelter residents to do workfare, kicking out
residents who don’t, and putting children of families who got thrown
out into foster care. Streets are not “bedrooms,” the Mayor declared,
and his policies were actually an act of “love” for the homeless,
teaching them “personal responsibility.”
“Personal responsibility” was the mantra of all Giuliani’s
rhetoric. If poor people don’t have the personal responsibility to
follow every single welfare regulation, then they don’t have enough
personal responsibility to deserve shelter. And if they don’t have
enough personal responsibility to ensure that they have shelter, then
they don’t have enough personal responsibility to be allowed to keep
their children.
“The work requirement is only a fragment,” says Patrick Markee of
the Coalition for the Homeless. “If someone is denied public
assistance, they will also be denied shelter. The city’s court papers
make this abundantly clear.”
The move set off a storm of protest. Homeless advocates
immediately filed three separate lawsuits to block the new rules.
Virtually all of the city’s “Tier II” shelters, apartment-like
dwellings for homeless families, announced that they would not
cooperate with throwing people out. And on Dec. 5, over 1,000 people
gathered in Union Square to hear Biblical denunciations of Giuliani’s
heartlessness.
“If Giuliani had been mayor of Bethlehem,” the Rev. Al Sharpton
thundered, “they would have put the baby Jesus into foster care.” And
Harlem pastor Father Bob Castle proclaimed that the Mayor’s
destination in the afterlife would be somewhere far below heaven.
The number of people in the city’s homeless shelters averaged
23,000 a night last year, up 8% from 1998, according to the Coalition
for the Homeless. They included an average of 5,000 families and
almost 9,000 children.
The new rules actually go back to 1995, when Giuliani and Gov.
George Pataki issued new shelter regulations. Homeless people would be
thrown out of shelters for 30 days or more if they failed to cooperate
with an assessment, violated shelter rules, failed to comply with a
service plan, or failed to comply with any public-assistance
requirement, from attending recertification hearings to obeying all
workfare rules. Homeless advocates challenged them.
Early last year, the Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court,
refused to review a lower-court ruling that those regulations were
constitutional—but could not be enforced in and arbitrary and
capricious manner, and that children could not be put into foster care
because their families were evicted from shelters.
The three lawsuits against the new Giuliani rules are based on
three separate court rulings on the right to shelter: the 1981 consent
decree in Callahan, in which the city agreed that homeless men had a
right to shelter; the Appellate Division’s 1986 ruling in McCain,
extending that right to families; and its 1989 Cosentino decision,
which held that children could not be put into foster care just
because their parents lacked housing.
The Callahan suit is before Justice Stanley Sklar, the McCain suit
before Justice Helen Freedman, and the Cosentino suit before Justice
Elliott Wilk.
SwampMidget
> For years, an elderly black woman panhandled on the corner of
> Second Avenue and East 11th Street, sitting by the wrought-iron fence
> surrounding St. Mark's Church, thanking passers-by whether or not they
> dropped quarters into her paper coffee cup.
>
> On the night before Thanksgiving, a young policewoman escorted her
> away from her spot.
>
> "I guess it's illegal to be homeless now," an observer commented.
>
> "I guess it is," she replied.
>
> She hasn't been back since.
wow. touching.
Now the facts: NYC had a serious problem with crime and a growing
homeless population. Mayor Giuliani addressed this situation with
three hundred million dollars going to city agencies to get these
people off the streets and find them help. The result was a cleaner
city, less crime, and homeless people no longer need to beg and sleep
on side walks or alleys.
Leftist lib dem spin: "Adolph Giuliani"
Merlin
list of homeless has officially subsided. the problem of the poor in
nyc is worse than ever. name one building created to supply housing
to the poor by any republican mayor in nyc in the last 15
years.............. there is none.
the system created by rudy was redesigned to not give people in need
the services they need. by redefining every need as just outside the
bounds of the services promised.
if you wish to continue the growth of an america christain
dictatorship in america, continue to vote for republican candidates,
including rudy. just look at his right hand man, that is about go to
prison rather than become the head of homeland security for bush.
in love with the living gay jesus,
merlin
W Spilman
Any spin here, boy lover?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFGit_tZDqs
Straight from the horses' mouths, they're useless
cowards.
WS
SwampMidget
> > Leftist lib dem spin: "Adolph Giuliani"
>
> Any spin here, boy lover?
>
no.
are you arguing that lib dems are not more prone to lean towards
leftist politics? and the "Adolph Giuliani" was simply taken from the
original poster.
so there is no spin here. sorry if the FACTS don't sit well with
you.
http://www.deanguitars.tv/userpics/lib8/arguing.med12345.jpg
W Spilman
"SwampMidget" <webm...@101click.com> wrote in message
news:1193335291....@y42g2000hsy.googlegroups.com...
Cute. You must be one of those "compassionate" conservatives
I keep hearing about.
WS
Freedom Fighter
The mass media sometimes calls him "America's mayor." Critics label him a
dangerous fascist. Whether he's the alleged hero who "took charge" on
September 11, 2001, or the frightening face of a new American Reich, it
appears Rudolph Giuliani will carry George W. Bush's torch into the 2008
presidential election.
When Giuliani emerged from the toxic dust of the World Trade Center the
national media caught a quick case of amnesia, preferring the iconic image
of a "hero" over reality. They quickly forgot Giuliani's dismal tenure in
mayoral office, his life-costing failures to address the threat of
terrorism, and his sorry performance on the morning of September 11, 2001.
Before picking up the "hero" moniker, Giuliani was commonly referred to in
the city he governed as a despotic fascist and a mean-spirited thug. These
accusations didn't just come from civil libertarians either. Former New
York Mayor Ed Koch likened Giuliani to former Chilean dictator Augusto
Pinochet. According to Koch, Giuliani "uses the levers of power to punish
any critic." Koch went on to explain, "He doesn't have that right - that's
why the First Amendment is so important." Yes, and by the end of 2002 the
courts had found Giuliani in violation of that constitutional pillar of
American freedom twenty-seven times!
More than 35 successful lawsuits were brought against Giuliani and his
administration for blocking free speech. In his book Speaking Freely, First
Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams said Giuliani had an "insistence on doing the
one thing that the First Amendment most clearly forbids:
using the power of government to restrict or punish speech critical of
government itself."
Giuliani's disdain for freedom of speech is best exemplified by the case of
Robert Lederman, an artist that drew caricatures of Giuliani as a dictator
and depicted his policies as transforming New York into a police state.
Lederman was ARRESTED FORTY-ONE TIMES during Giuliani's reign, not by street
cops but police brass under Giuliani's orders, for displaying his art at
political demonstrations and on the streets of New York. All were false
arrests, as Lederman was never convicted of a crime.
In a similar fashion and again in brazen violation of the First Amendment,
Giuliani ordered paid advertisements for New York Magazine removed from
public buses because the ads touted the magazine as "possibly the only good
thing in New York Rudy hasn't taken credit for." Giuliani's response to
criticism thus often proves it was highly justified.
According to the New York Times, the Daily News, and the New York Post, now
New York State Governor Eliot Spitzer went on record in October 1998,
saying, "the current Mayor thinks he's a dictator, and does not have
sufficient respect not only for other branches of government, but also for
the citizenry and its opportunities to speak out and be heard."
Spitzer's statements, like Lederman's false arrests, stemmed from Giuliani's
totalitarian "zero tolerance" policies, which he claimed would improve the
"quality of life" in New York by punishing trivial violations such as
jaywalking, drinking in public, marijuana possession, and panhandling, and
even non-violations such as Lederman's persistent expressions of free
speech. Under this policy, New Yorkers were handcuffed and dragged off to
jail for peacefully drinking beer on their front stoops - the New York City
equivalent of hanging out on the porch. Marijuana possession arrests
increased by well over 4,000 percent. Arrests were even made for such
things as riding a bike without a bell on it and sitting on milk crates on
the sidewalk.
Giuliani's courtship of rogue police officers and seduction of the NYPD to
become his personal Gestapo began in September 1992, when he addressed an
angry rally of cops protesting then-mayor Dinkins's proposal for a civilian
board to review police misconduct.
It was a rowdy, often threatening, crowd. Hundreds of white off-duty cops
drank heavily (a violation for which, under Giuliani, many citizens would
later be arrested), and a few waved signs like "Dump the Washroom
Attendant," a racist reference to mayor Dinkins. Twice, Giuliani called the
Dinkins proposal "bullshit." The crowd cheered, and Giuliani was jubilant.
"Rudy was out there inciting white cops to riot," Mr. Dinkins stated.
As mayor, Giuliani's racial and ethnic biases and favoritisms were blatant.
For over a century the public use of firecrackers by the Asian-American
community for their New Years celebration, a religious and cultural
tradition, had been allowed. In 1997 though Giuliani lined Chinatown
streets with hundreds of police to suppress this, and even refused to allow
a permit for a professionally supervised display. The Christian equivalent
of this would be banning Christmas trees and decorations because they
occasionally start fires. Giuliani never relented on this. On the Jewish
festival of Purim however, when fireworks are used in the streets of Jewish
neighborhoods, the police continued to look the other way! They also
ignored bonfires set in Jewish neighborhood streets to destroy leavened
bread before Passover. Can you imagine the police response to this in any
poor, Black, Hispanic, or Asian-American community? Giuliani's lasting
legacy is that in New York fireworks are OK on Purim, but celebrate the 4th
of July with them and you can get busted. So much for "Independence" Day.
Eventually almost 70,000 citizens sued the city for such police abuses as
strip-searching suspected jaywalkers. In 1999 James Savage, president of
the New York City police union, referred to Giuliani's zero tolerance policy
as "a blueprint for a police state and tyranny." Under the guise of fighting
crime, Giuliani had thus transformed the NYPD into his own private Gestapo,
going as far as assigning two NYPD detectives, at taxpayer expense, as
round-the-clock bodyguards for his MISTRESS. This after his closing down
all the strip clubs on "moral grounds!"
Giuliani shored up control of the police department by appointing crony
Howard Safir as commissioner. Safir then made the department's Street
Crimes Unit into what New York journalist Nat Hentoff described as a "rogue
operation" that made "Dirty Harry look like Mahatma Gandhi." Fashion-wise,
the unit had a resemblance to Guatemala's notorious military death squads,
wearing "We Own the Night" t-shirts, and shirts citing Ernest Hemingway's
"There is no hunting like the hunting of man" quote - quite a variation from
standard issue uniforms!
This is the police unit that became notorious for shooting innocent African
immigrant Amadou Diallo FORTY TIMES as he reached for his wallet after being
ordered to show identification. When New Yorkers took to the streets to
protest the unjustified killing, Giuliani told the press that people were
protesting due to "their own personal inadequacies."
Hatian immigrant Abner Louima, arrested in 1997 on a minor charge, was
brutally beaten on the trip to Brooklyn's 70th precinct. There officers
took him into a bathroom where convicted rogue cop Justin Volpe sadistically
shoved a plunger handle up Louima's rectum, then forced the same object into
his mouth, breaking his teeth. Louima was hospitalized with serious
injuries, and stated that during his torture one of these sadists said to
him "This is Giuliani time!"
When Safir left, Giuliani appointed Bernard Kerik to take his place. This
is the man Giuliani also recommended to head up Homeland Security. Kerik
later pleaded guilty to accepting gifts and loans from businesses with
alleged organized crime ties while he served as police commissioner.
Some credit Giuliani's Draconian excesses with the drop in crime during his
tenure, but he just happened to be in the right place at the right time to
take credit for this. During this period crime dropped similarly
nationwide, mostly the result of changing demographics and better policing
methods.
Eventually the Giuliani-sanctioned anything-goes extremism infected other
units in the police department. When plainclothes cops asked a black man on
the street to sell them marijuana, the man, Patrick Dorismond, took offense
to being called a drug dealer and got into a scuffle with the unidentified
officers, who then SHOT HIM DEAD. Giuliani issued a knee-jerk defense of
the killer cops, telling the press that Dorismond was "no altar boy."
Salon.com pointed out that in fact he WAS an altar boy! Desperate to
justify the killing, Giuliani ordered the ILLEGAL release of Dorismond's
sealed juvenile record - for disorderly conduct! It seems that under
Giuliani, this justifies the death penalty. Giuliani's contribution to
Dorismond's funeral was a squadron of police in full riot gear, inciting
violence that would not have occurred without their unnecessary and
disrespectful presence.
Former schools Chancellor Rudy Crew, a one-time pal of Giuliani, stated:
"There's something very deeply pathological about Rudy's humanity - He was
barren, completely emotionally barren, on the issue of race." Giuliani's
vile racism has even been acknowledged by his successor, Mayor Bloomberg:
"You forget that every single decision [in the Giuliani administration],
everybody, every story, everything was always couched in terms of race" -
quoted in the November 4, 2003 Daily News from Vanity Fair magazine.
By the time his ship came in on September 11, 2001, Giuliani's approval
rating, according to a Quinnipiac University poll, had hit a Bush-like 37
percent. Hizzoner got downright weird, proposing a Taliban-style "decency
panel," operated out of his office, that would have the power to determine
what would be considered "art" in New York City. This came after the
debacle of Giuliani's failed attempt to cut public funding for the Brooklyn
Museum because he considered art on exhibit there to be offensive. He also
began having nightclubs lacking a cabaret license raided by the police for
allowing patrons to dance. And early in 2001 he ordered a city-wide ban on
pet ferrets, claiming there was something "deranged" about opponents of the
ban, and that "excessive concern with little weasels is a sickness."
In desperation to recover his plummeting popularity, Giuliani seized upon
any and every opportunity to appear the "hero." Despite demanding a
crackdown on speeding, his car and entourage were seen and reported in the
press as greatly exceeding the speed limit in racing to locations of
newsworthy events so he could appear there in front of the media cameras.
Giuliani's perhaps most criminally negligent if not malevolent pretense to
heroism came with his West Nile Virus hoax. This usually mild,
mosquito-borne disease is not contagious person to person and is far less
dangerous than common influenza, but Giuliani had the media play it up as an
impending disaster, and came on like a knight in shining armor with a
solution. His solution was far worse than the disease, and no doubt has
caused and will cause many illnesses and deaths, as did his post-9/11
assurances that the Ground Zero air was safe to breathe. He had the entire
city repeatedly sprayed from the air with Malathion, a highly toxic
insecticide, and completely disregarded the manufacturer's advised safety
precautions in doing so. Note that malicious intent is far harder to prove
in such environmental poisoning cases than when the police are ordered to
falsely arrest someone, or tacitly encouraged to brutally beat suspects or
shoot them to death.
Regarding the Ground Zero air and the many now dead or dying therefrom,
former EPA Secretary Christine Whitman has stated that she urged Ground Zero
workers to wear respirators, but that Giuliani blocked her efforts, and also
that the Giuliani administration appeared to be more concerned with its
image than the safety and speedy response of EPA employees in the wake of
the subsequent anthrax scare.
Jerome Hauer was the city's emergency management director from 1996 to 2000,
and is recognized as a leading expert on biological and chemical terrorism.
"Rudy would make a terrible president and that is why I am speaking now," Mr
Hauer told London's The Sunday Telegraph. "He's a control freak who
micro-manages decisions, he has a confrontational character trait and picks
fights just to score points. He's the last thing this country needs as
president." Mr Hauer also accused Mr Giuliani of failing to sort out turf
battles between the city's police and fire departments, and of appointing
inexperienced cronies to key positions.
Pet ferrets weren't the only ones to get the boot in Giuliani's New York.
Hizzoner boasted of moving people from welfare to workfare, where thousands
of people earned less than two dollars per hour replacing an equivalent
number of parks department employees whose positions were downsized. During
this period, 13,000 welfare-dependent City University students were FORCED
TO LEAVE COLLEGE and enter the menial workfare force, where less than six
percent of participants transition to real employment paying minimum wage or
more. In this we see Giuliani's cruel rewarding of riches and punishing
poverty, as if wealth and poverty were not inherently rewarding and
punishing conditions.
Mega-real estate developer Donald Trump described Giuliani as "maybe the
best [mayor] ever," obviously meaning the most profitable for him. However,
Ralph Nader called him "the oligarch's mayor." Giuliani took credit for a
high-end real estate boom while presiding over double-digit rises in
homelessness, cutting public spending on affordable housing by nearly half
and housing for the homeless by nearly three quarters.
Today, "America's mayor" lives and breathes a 9/11 mantra. Forget the
pathetic, cruel, even sadistic details of his tenure in Gracie Mansion; he
is now portrayed as an iconic American hero
- the "leader" we needed when George W. Bush was otherwise occupied on
September 11, 2001.
But was Giuliani really a hero on that infamous day of horror?
Just like Bush, Giuliani's failing political career was rescued by the
terrorists that attacked New York and Washington on 9/11. Some believe
these terrorists had help from within the US government, and even that some
within the government itself were the terrorists. To find criminals, one
must consider who most benefited from the crime.
It is strange if not truly sinister that Giuliani stated to Peter Jennings
in an interview that on 9/11 he had prior knowledge of the World Trade
Center collapses, but subsequently he denied and continues to deny that he
said this. Here Giuliani is caught in a direct lie - you can hear it at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hNmf76GUCw More documentation can be found
at: http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/wtc_giuliani.html
On 9/11 New York was left without an emergency command center because
Giuliani, against the advice of both the police and fire departments,
decided to locate the center conveniently near City Hall in World Trade
Center building 7, along with tanks containing tens of thousands of gallons
of fuel, in direct violation of New York City fire laws. This was despite a
1993 bombing of the WTC, proving it to be the number one terrorism target.
It was this decision that put him on the street on 9/11 instead of inside a
command center coordinating operations. Ironically, this decision also put
him in front of hundreds of press cameras, sparking his image transformation
into a "hero."
While our "hero" was posing for the cameras, however, there was no
communication possible between the police department and the fire
department, whose REAL heroes were rushing to their deaths inside the
towers. And there was likewise no communication between the police officers
who identified an open stairway for escape from above the fire zone and the
911 phone operators who were telling soon-to-be-dead office workers to stay
put and wait for the firefighters. Giuliani had been aware of the
inadequacy of the emergency services' communications equipment for many
years, but did absolutely nothing about it. This criminal negligence also
doomed hundreds of firefighters and police that were unable to hear the
orders to evacuate the north tower.
Whatever possibility existed for communication between the police and fire
departments, whose radios operated on different frequencies, evaporated when
Giuliani visited a makeshift fire/police command center that had formed in
his absence. There he ORDERED THE POLICE BRASS TO LEAVE and accompany him
uptown. This "heroic leadership" effectively put the fire department and
police department brass in different physical locations with no
communication possible between them.
Present Police Commissioner Ray Kelly stated that he doesn't have any idea
who was in charge on 9/11 because Bernie Kerik and all the top chiefs in the
police department basically acted as bodyguards to Giuliani and no one was
running the shop.
A month after the September 11 attacks, firefighters took to the streets to
protest Giuliani's decision to limit the number of uniformed firefighters
and police officers sifting through the rubble for remains, and the "scoop
and dump" haste of the cleanup. They accused the administration of rushing
the cleanup at the cost of trashing the remains of victims. [And, it is
pointed out by 9/11 conspiracy theorists, to dispose of any incriminating
evidence as quickly as possible. The steel, some claim bearing evidence of
demolition explosives, was shipped to China and quickly melted down.] At
the firefighters' demonstration Giuliani, in signature style, ordered Peter
Gorman, head of the Uniformed Fire Officers Association, and Kevin
Gallagher, head of the Uniformed Firefighters Association, to be ARRESTED at
the protest site! A spokesperson for Gallagher told the media "The mayor
fails to realize that New York City is not a dictatorship." Gorman went a
step further, joining hordes of New Yorkers calling the mayor a "fascist" -
which brings us back to the fascistic conduct issue that dogged Giuliani
throughout his mayoral tenure.
Giuliani often answers the charge by accusing his detractors of ethnic
bias - as if "fascist" were somehow an ethnic slur against
Italian-Americans. His charge itself, however, reeks of
anti-Italian-American ethnic bias, ignoring the role New York's
Italian-American community has played in local politics - giving the city,
for example, its most revered mayor, Fiorello LaGuardia. The fascist
charges do not stem from Giuliani's ethnicity, they stem from his own
actions and statements, such as:
" - FREEDOM IS NOT A CONCEPT IN WHICH PEOPLE CAN DO ANYTHING THEY WANT, BE
ANYTHING THEY CAN BE. FREEDOM IS ABOUT AUTHORITY. FREEDOM IS ABOUT THE
WILLINGNESS OF EVERY SINGLE HUMAN BEING TO CEDE TO LAWFUL AUTHORITY A GREAT
DEAL OF DISCRETION ABOUT WHAT YOU DO AND HOW YOU DO IT."
- Mayor Giuliani, quoted in the New York Times, March 17, 1994.
Though sworn to uphold our Constitution, by the end of 2002 the courts had
found Giuliani in violation of the First Amendment TWENTY-SEVEN TIMES.
Mayor David Dinkins, his predecessor in office, bravely stated that Giuliani
is " - a bully, mean-spirited, and he rules through fear and intimidation."
At reason.com/blog, one finds a statement by David Weigel regarding
Giuliani:
"This is the cornerstone of his philosophy: For liberty to thrive, you need
to dramatically empower the state and the legal system. Criminals and
would-be criminals should have less freedom in order for the rest of us to
enjoy our freedoms. This is the framework he's applied to basically every
issue - "
Who, we must ask, are the "would-be criminals?" Obviously ALL OF US, as at
one time or another everyone knowingly or unknowingly commits a violation
such as jaywalking, speeding, or drinking in public. So under Giuliani's
rule we ALL have less freedom, and the priveleged "rest of us" are those
that rule over us, the "dramatically empowered" state. Does this sound like
something out of Mein Kampf?
And you thought that George W. Bush was a dangerous tyrant?
When the lessons of history are ignored, history repeats.
Compare the following to the above Giuliani "Freedom" quote:
"State authority must provide for peace and order, and peace and order in
turn must conversely make possible the existence of state authority. Within
these two poles all life must now revolve...Ideas of 'freedom,' mostly of a
misunderstood nature, inject themselves into the state conceptions of these
circles." - Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf.
And an old but relevant news story:
Berlin, Monday, Aug. 20, 1934 -- Eighty-nine and nine-tenths percent of the
German voters endorsed in yesterday's plebiscite Chancellor Hitler's
assumption of greater power than has ever been possessed by any other ruler
in modern times. Nearly 10 per cent indicated their disapproval. The
result was expected.
RECOMMENDED READING:
Giuliani: Nasty Man - by Edward I. Koch, former NYC mayor.
Giuliani Time (DVD) - with David Dinkins, Ron Kuby, Wayne Barrett, Rudolph
W. Giuliani, Kevin Keating.
Grand Illusion: The Untold Story of Rudy Giuliani and 9/11 - by Wayne
Barrett and Dan Collins.
"Rudy Giuliani: Urban Legend" can be viewed at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaCYEEO-58I&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Erudy%2Durbanlegend%2Ecom%2F
Freedom Fighter
When Rudy Giuliani emerged from the toxic dust of the World Trade Center the
national media caught a quick case of amnesia, preferring the iconic image
of a "hero" over reality. They quickly forgot Giuliani's dismal tenure in
mayoral office, his life-costing failures to address the threat of
terrorism, and his sorry performance on the morning of September 11, 2001.
By the time his ship came in on 9/11, Giuliani's approval rating among his
constituency, according to a Quinnipiac University poll, had hit a Bush-like
37 percent. In desperation to recover his plummeting popularity, Giuliani
seized upon any and every opportunity to appear the "hero." Despite ordering
a crackdown on speeding, his car and entourage were seen and reported in the
press as greatly exceeding the speed limit in racing to locations of
newsworthy events so he could appear there in front of the media cameras.
Desperate to become the "hero," he broke the laws he demanded that others
obey.
Prior to 9/11, Giuliani's most criminally negligent if not malevolent
pretense to heroism came with his West Nile Virus hoax. This usually mild,
mosquito-borne disease is not contagious person to person and is far less
dangerous than common influenza, but Giuliani had the media play it up as an
impending disaster, and came on like a knight in shining armor with a
solution. His cure was far worse than the disease, and no doubt has caused
and will cause many illnesses and deaths, as did his post-9/11 assurances
that the Ground Zero air was safe to breathe. He had all of New York City
repeatedly sprayed from the air with Malathion, a highly toxic insecticide,
and completely disregarded the manufacturer's advised safety precautions in
doing so. Note that malicious intent is far harder to prove in
environmental poisoning cases than as when Giuliani ordered the police to
falsely arrest someone, or tacitly encouraged them to brutally beat or shoot
suspects to death - all among the many incidents that led to his plummeting
popularity before 9/11.
Today, Giuliani lives and breathes a 9/11 mantra, and as he desired is
portrayed as an iconic American hero - the "leader" we needed when George W.
Bush was otherwise occupied on September 11, 2001. But was Giuliani REALLY a
hero on or after that infamous day of horror?
As with Bush, Giuliani's failing political career was rescued by the
terrorists that attacked New York on 9/11. Some believe these terrorists
had help from within the US government, and even that some within the
government itself were the actual terrorists. To find criminals, one must
consider who most benefited from the crime. It is strange if not truly
sinister that Giuliani stated to Peter Jennings in an interview that on 9/11
he had prior knowledge of the World Trade Center collapses, but subsequently
he denied and continues to deny that he said this. Here Giuliani is caught
in a direct lie - you can hear it at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hNmf76GUCw More documentation can be found
at: http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/wtc_giuliani.html
Regarding the Ground Zero air and the many now dead and dying therefrom,
former EPA Secretary Christine Whitman has stated that she urged Ground Zero
workers to wear respirators, but that Giuliani blocked her efforts, and also
that the Giuliani administration appeared to be more concerned with its
image than the safety and speedy response of EPA employees in the wake of
the subsequent anthrax scare.
Administration documents and thousands of pages of legal testimony filed in
a lawsuit against New York City show the Giuliani administration never
meaningfully enforced federal requirements that those at the site wear
respirators. At the same time, the administration warned companies working
on the toxic pile that they would face penalties or be fired if work slowed.
Giuliani said in the first month after the attacks, "The air quality is safe
and acceptable." However, in the weeks after the attacks, the United States
Geological Survey identified hundreds of asbestos hot spots of debris dust
that remained on buildings. By the end of the month the USGS reported that
the toxicity of the debris was akin to that of drain cleaner. It would
eventually be determined that a wide swath of lower Manhattan and Brooklyn
had been heavily contaminated by highly caustic and toxic materials. The
city's health agencies, such as the Department of Environmental Protection,
failed to supervise or issue guidelines for the testing and cleanup of
private buildings, leaving this responsibility to building owners.
"The city ran a generally slipshod, haphazard, uncoordinated, unfocused
response to environmental concerns," said David Newman, an industrial
hygienist with the New York Committee on Occupational Safety and Health.
On 9/11 New York was left without an emergency command center because
Giuliani, going against the advice of both the police and fire departments,
decided to locate the center conveniently near City Hall in World Trade
Center building 7, along with tanks containing tens of thousands of gallons
of deisel fuel - in direct violation of New York City fire laws. This was
despite the 1993 WTC bombing that proved it to be the number one terrorism
target. It was this decision that put him on the street on 9/11 instead of
inside a command center coordinating operations. Ironically, this also put
him in front of hundreds of media cameras, sparking his image transformation
into a "hero."
While our "hero" was posing for the cameras, however, there was no
communication possible between the police department and the fire
department, whose REAL heroes were rushing to their deaths inside the
towers. And there was likewise no communication between the police officers
who identified an open stairway for escape from above the fire zone and the
911 phone operators who were telling soon-to-be-dead office workers to stay
put and wait for the firefighters. Giuliani had been aware of the
inadequacy of the emergency services' communications equipment for many
years, but did absolutely nothing about it. This criminal negligence also
doomed hundreds of firefighters that were unable to hear orders to evacuate
the north tower prior to collapse.
Whatever possibility existed for communication between the police and fire
departments, whose radios operated on different frequencies, evaporated when
Giuliani visited a makeshift fire/police command center that had formed in
his absence. There he ORDERED THE POLICE BRASS TO LEAVE and accompany him
uptown. This "heroic leadership" effectively put the fire department and
police department commanders in different physical locations with no
communication possible between them.
Present Police Commissioner Ray Kelly stated that he doesn't have any idea
who was in charge on 9/11 because Bernie Kerik and all the top chiefs in the
police department basically acted as bodyguards to Giuliani and no one was
running the shop.
Firefighters finally took to the streets to protest Giuliani's decision to
limit the number of uniformed firefighters and police officers sifting
through the rubble for remains, and the "scoop-and-dump" haste of the
cleanup. They accused the administration of rushing the cleanup at the cost
of trashing the remains of victims. [And, it is pointed out by 9/11
conspiracy theorists, to quickly dispose of any incriminating evidence. The
steel, some claim bearing evidence of demolition explosives, was shipped to
China and quickly melted down.] At the firefighters' demonstration Giuliani,
in signature style, ordered Peter Gorman, head of the Uniformed Fire
Officers Association, and Kevin Gallagher, head of the Uniformed
Firefighters Association, to be ARRESTED at the protest site! A
spokesperson for Gallagher told the media "The mayor fails to realize that
New York City is not a dictatorship." Gorman went a step further, joining
the multitudes of New Yorkers calling the mayor a "fascist" - an often-heard
charge that dogged Giuliani throughout his mayoral tenure.
The fact is that Giuliani's switch to a scoop-and-dump cleanup coincided
with the removal of millions of dollars in gold, silver, and other assets of
the Bank of Nova Scotia that were buried beneath the towers' debris. Once
the money was out, Giuliani sided with the developers that opposed a lengthy
recovery effort, ordering the scoop-and-dump operation so they could proceed
with redevelopment. Harold Schaitberger of the International Association of
Firefighters (IAFF), the nation's largest firefighters' organization,
assailed Giuliani, detailing how the mayor ditched body-recovery efforts
only 24 hours after recovering the $230 million. "He found the gold on
October 31, and November 1 is when he issued the order to remove the
firefighters from their recovery mode."
President Steve Cassidy of the Uniformed Firefighters Association, which
represents about 9,000 firefighters, recently told The NY Post that the UFA
"will never be with Rudy Giuliani - we will make it known that he is not
qualified to lead."
Cassidy's blunt assessments stemmed from the "poor preparations" Giuliani
made to protect the city and first-responders in the wake of the 1993 WTC
bombing that killed six. "For someone running for the highest office in the
country and claiming to be a leader on terrorism, Giuliani's track record
stinks," Cassidy declared. 9/11 Commission member John Lehman likewise said
that New York City's disaster planning was "not worthy of the Boy Scouts,
let alone this great city."
"All he was doing was wandering around the city, and he wasn't able to make
sure firefighters and police could communicate. Serious mistakes, crucial
mistakes were made," Cassidy fumed, pointing to the faulty radios that had
failed in 1993 and failed again in 2001, preventing hundreds of firefighters
from hearing orders to evacuate the north tower. "On the heroic memory of
343 dead firefighters, he wants to run for president of the United States!
It's a disgrace."
"Rudy Giuliani did not have New York City prepared for a second terror
attack, and prior to September 11th his poll numbers reflected that he
couldn't get elected to any significant position," the UFA head stated.
"What did he do, in the weeks and months after 9/11, except claim he was the
guiding light?" He also lashed out at Giuliani for campaigning on
"revisionist history," and excoriated him for "not lifting one finger" to
help sick Ground Zero workers who had to push Albany legislators to pass
9/11 health-care bills after hundreds of first responders fell ill.
A relevant video documentary, "Rudy Giuliani: Urban Legend," can be viewed
at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaCYEEO-58I&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Erudy%2Durbanlegend%2Ecom%2F
"This image of Rudy Giuliani as America's mayor, it's a myth," states
Cassidy. Denying charges of political motivation for opposing Giuliani,
Cassidy said his union supported George Bush in the last election and had
supported George Pataki for governor of New York. "It's not about
Republicans, it's about THIS Republican," he said.
Jerome Hauer was the city's emergency management director from 1996 to 2000,
and is recognized as a leading expert on biological and chemical terrorism.
"Rudy would make a terrible president and that is why I am speaking now," Mr
Hauer told London's The Sunday Telegraph. "He's a control freak who
micro-manages decisions, he has a confrontational character trait and picks
fights just to score points. He's the last thing this country needs as
president." Mr Hauer also accused Mr Giuliani of failing to sort out turf
battles between the city's police and fire departments, and of appointing
inexperienced cronies to key positions.
INTERVIEW: Wayne Barrett by Williams Cole
http://brooklynrail.org/2006/9/local/wayne-barrett
Wayne Barrett, a Senior Editor at the Village Voice, is an icon of New York
City journalism, resulting from exhaustively researched investigative
reporting that led to his classic books City for Sale: Ed Koch and the
Betrayal of New York, and Rudy! An Investigative Biography. Rudy! reveals
shocking new information about Giuliani's past and was instrumental in
researching Giuliani Time, a recent feature documentary about Giuliani and
New York City. Barrett's new book (co-written with Dan Collins) is Grand
Illusion: The Untold Story of Rudy Giuliani and 9/11. - W. Cole
Williams Cole (Brooklyn Rail): In writing and researching the book, what was
the most shocking thing you found out about Giuliani and 9/11 for you, a
Giuliani expert?
Wayne Barrett: I was really surprised at how the 1993 World Trade Center
bombing had absolutely no effect on his consciousness. Six people died, but
so many more could have and we show in four or five different ways how a
much bigger catastrophe was only narrowly averted. It was a dramatic
announcement of the arrival of terrorism in this country and in this city.
Then in June of '93 the FBI and the NYPD busted terrorists in Queens who
were a week away from blowing up the Holland Tunnel, the United Nations, a
whole series of targets. So 1993 was the peak year of terrorism in this
country and in this city prior to 9/11, yet it did not register in any way
in the Giuliani mind. We did many interviews with people that were in high
levels within the Giuliani administration, who interviewed for the police
commissioner in 1993 and the panel that Giuliani appointed for choosing the
police commissioner. All of them say that the question of the '93 bombings,
the question of terrorism generally, absolutely never came up. The mayor
never raised it, top advisors never raised it, it was nowhere on the screen,
it was nowhere. It was much the same two years later when Giuliani created
the Office of Emergency Management which, retroactively, he claimed was the
best sign that he understood the terrorist threat. But as we establish in
the book, terrorism had nothing to do with the OEM. Again, we interviewed
the panel that picked the first OEM director, we interviewed the candidates,
even Jerry Hauer who got the job, and terrorism had almost nothing to do
with the creation of the OEM. So what I was really shocked about, and
surprised about, was how clear it was that terrorism was something that
Giuliani never fixated on.
Brooklyn Rail: But now he pitches himself as an expert on terrorism.
Barrett: Yes, but it's not just Rudy who postures himself as a terrorism
expert. Why is it that after every event, the media immediately asks him to
come on, and the media positions him as an expert on terrorism? It is
obviously a consequence of the belief that because he was roaming the
canyons of lower Manhattan on 9/11, that somehow that is an indication that
he is a leader in the fight against terrorism, when actually he wouldn't
have been in the canyons of lower Manhattan if he had located his command
center where Mike Bloomberg has now and where his own top security people
recommended he locate it in the '90s - namely in downtown Brooklyn,
underneath the ground. If the command center had been there, Rudy wouldn't
have been roaming the canyons of lower Manhattan and he wouldn't be the icon
of 9/11. But somehow that visual has insinuated itself in the American
media mindset, that he's the expert on terrorism because he faced it down
that morning. He should have been operating less inspirationally and more
effectively in a command center in a responsible location, rather than at a
most vulnerable location. And he should have been with his top chiefs, the
fire department, police department, emergency management; he should have
been making solid judgments about how to respond to this. Instead, he was
walking the streets of lower Manhattan, making bad decisions down there as
well.
Rail: And it's pretty clear that the comments on security and terrorism are
going to be one of his defining roles should he run for president.
Barrett: Absolutely, I think the rationale for his presidential candidacy is
five years of spin about him as the leader on 9/11 and as the terrorism
prophet. I think he made some terrible mistakes that morning in terms of
strategic response, but as far as an inspirational figure goes, he said all
the right things. Even on 9/11 itself he was circumspect enough to say
let's not blame a community for this attack - he was urging tolerance.
After seven-and-a-half years of his mayoralty, the last thing we would
expect from him is empathy and tolerance. But beyond that voice was seven
years of miserable preparation for any attack, and even critical mistakes
that day. For example, he left the makeshift command post set up at the
World Trade Center - essentially a table set up by the fire department -
with all the police brass, in total violation of his own protocol. If he
had left even one of the top police commanders with the fire chiefs, if he
had observed even one iota of his own protocol, then the fire chiefs would
have known what the police brass believed, which was that the towers were
going to collapse. But because he didn't leave anybody there, because he
didn't insist on a unified command post, but instead split the command post
himself, then the malfunctioning of the radios proved to be very much more
deadly because you couldn't have communication. If you had a police chief
standing next to a fire chief at the command post, they would have been able
to exchange vital information. There were critical failings, even on that
terrible morning.
Rail: Talk a little more about the radio situation.
Barrett: I think we have major, shocking revelations about the relationship
between the Giuliani Administration and Motorola. There is such travesty in
the fact that firefighters wound up with the same radios in their hands that
malfunctioned at the '93 bombing. We have one chapter devoted exclusively
to tracking the narrative of why it was that no change occurred on the radio
front, and that there are all kinds of relationships. A pivotal person at
the city's information agency had a sister who worked for Motorola in a high
capacity, and this was the woman who steered the city, in large measure,
toward the new radios that were purchased. But even so, the city waited
until March of 2001 to actually put new radios in firefighters hands, and
then those radios malfunctioned within a week. The Giuliani Administration
could have easily reconfigured those radios, the new radios, and put them
back in fire houses in the intervening months between then and 9/11.
Instead, as a lame duck administration, it didn't do anything to put those
radios back out. We detailed a whole story of the nexus of the
relationships between Motorola and the Giuliani Administration and I think
it's certainly one of the reasons that so many firefighters died that day -
because of how bad radio communications were. I think we make that case
very strongly.
Rail: Who went on the record for the book and were you surprised by some of
the people that did?
Barrett: Some of the most interesting quotes in the book come from the staff
of the 9/11 Commission itself. We talked to almost everybody who worked on
chapter nine of the 9/11 Commission report that deals specifically with the
city's response. I think some of the most interesting quotations come from
people like Don Farmer, who was one of the top counsels in the Commission in
charge of chapter nine, and Sam Caspersen who is top assistant. Both of
them said some pretty remarkable things in the book. Don Farmer, for
example, says that there's no question, had the command center been located
at a responsible site where the city could've functioned that day, that in
his mind there's no question that the number of casualties would have been
greatly reduced. The current Police Commissioner Ray Kelly says that he
doesn't have any idea who was in charge on 9/11 because Bernie Kerik and all
the top chiefs in the police department basically acted as bodyguards to
Giuliani and no one was running the shop. They didn't even open the
emergency command center at the police department until an hour into the
incident. Louis Anemone, the highest-ranking officer throughout most of the
Giuliani era, said he worked for more than a year developing what he called
the vulnerability list, defining the most vulnerable sites for terrorists in
New York. But when he made his presentation to the mayor about it, Anemone
said the mayor glazed over, he was totally uninterested. And of course, the
World Trade Center was at the top of his vulnerability list. So some of the
people who did talk for the record are pretty remarkable. It's a sign of
the fact that, in New York at least, people are willing to come to grips
with the failings that cost lives that day.
Rail: I wonder if you could comment, after writing two books now about
Giuliani, how you would sum up his personality? Does he calculate things
politically, is he an opportunist? What is the essence there? Can he admit
mistakes?
Barrett: He's never really admitted any mistakes about 9/11. It's
astonishing to me. I don't think he's a very reflective man about these
kinds of things. Rudy is a spinmeister, he is an extraordinary, flexible
public personality in the sense that he now champions virtually any
Republican. He was campaigning for Rick Santorum in Pennsylvania, who
likened gay people, black and gay people, to animals. Yet the night of 9/11
Rudy went to the house of Howard Koeppel, his gay friend, where he had been
staying because of his marital difficulties, and where he continued to stay.
He was living with two gay men on the night of 9/11 and now he's campaigning
for Rick Santorum who is likening them to animals. That's Rudy's
ever-flexible political mind. The last time he ran for public office was in
1997. People tend to forget how long ago it was, and then he was very
consciously projecting himself as this very non-partisan manager who was
only sort of accidentally a Republican. He used to do everything to
distance himself from his years of service to Ronald Reagan when he ran for
mayor of New York in 1989 and 1993. He consciously did that, and explicitly
did it. Now, he invokes Ronald Reagan all the time. Recently he was
campaigning for Ralph Reed and he was invoking Jesus in Florida. He is
certainly calculated. It's this elastic politics, this ability to be
whatever he needs to be to make it to the next goal. It's so striking. I
don't think there's any core there.
Freedom Fighter
References:
http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the_next_hurrah/2007/03/rudy_giuliani_w.html
http://www.townhall.com/blog/g/432306c2-20b7-4fb5-bb5a-008d54eaf343
http://trustme.com/story.php?title=Rudy-Giuliani--pedo-priest
http://www.bishop-accountability.org/
http://littlemissattila.mu.nu/archives/giuliani_in_drag.jpg
http://bottleofblog.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/guilianidrag.jpg
With the above references you can read in depth about priestly pedophilia
and its ties to a rather hypocritical Presidential candidate. Giuliani's
close association with and promotion of criminal cop Kerik is a better known
issue, as are his adultery and family estrangements, but these are less
deeply indicative of Giuliani's moral bankruptcy than his relatively unknown
Placa connection.
Alan Placa and Rudy Giuliani were high school buddies, and they remained
close friends through College. Post-college, Placa went to the Seminary, and
Giuliani to law school. After he was ordained, Placa attended law school
too. Eventually he became a Monsignor in the Diocese of Rockville Center on
Long Island, and Giuliani went to Washington in Reagan's Department of
Justice. When Giuliani wanted an annulment of his first marriage - to a 2nd
cousin, a union normally frowned upon by the Catholic Church, Placa did the
job - after being best man at their wedding!
Monsignor Placa got into considerable trouble in the late 1990s when accused
of sexually abusing two minors that could not sue him or the Diocese because
the five-year statute of limitations was long past. When the story broke
Monsignor Placa came up in several parts of it. While serving on Long Island
he had developed a legal strategy for dealing with sex abuse complaints.
This involved having an "intervention team" meet with family members and the
abused, without revealing that Placa was indeed the Diocese lawyer on such
matters. Placa took great pride that in cases that if litigated might cost
the Diocese millions, he could frequently manipulate the situation and get
them off for a few thousand. Of course the Monsignor was flying a false
flag - he was not a spiritual counsel, he was the Bishop's lawyer. He
traveled the country teaching Bishops this evasion technique, with about 200
successful cases outside his own Diocese.
In the 1980s, the preferred method of dealing with Priestly Pedophilia was
to send the black-collared child molesters off for "therapy." There were
several institutions available, one being a huge fraud called the House of
Affirmation run by a Father Thomas A. Kane. Kane lied about his degrees in
psychology, but that was only found out later. In the meantime he acquired
lots of high-grade real estate, and when he was about to go under, he
transferred to Placa titles for property in Massachusetts and Florida, among
other assets. The transfers were not discovered for years.
When this story was all over the papers in 2002, Suffolk County Long Island
had a Grand Jury review the situation with the Rockville Center Diocese, and
while they could not charge Placa because of the statute of limitations,
they issued a report about his "intervention team" manipulating victims and
their families, and the allegations of his abuse of two teens. As a result
Monsignor Placa was suspended from the priesthood and essentially defrocked.
He was allowed to say one public Mass however - at Giuliani's Mother's
funeral, causing the event to be picketed by sex abuse victims! When the
Grand Jury was trying to serve Placa with a subpoena, Giuliani hid him until
the term was out - a probable obstruction of justice by former U.S. Attorney
Giuliani.
Placa is today an extremely close Giuliani friend and associate, despite
being credibly accused of sexual molestation and, perhaps worse, using the
system to cover up his and other abuse cases. The story goes back to a 2002
Newsday article about a January 1975 day when a teenager, Richard Tollner,
volunteered to help make banners for the annual Right to Life march in
Washington. According to the story, the student claims Monsignor Placa
pulled out some posters in the deserted administrative area as if to show
him something, and then began fondling him - all the while making
conversation about the posters.
Tollner said the incidents were repeated every month or so for the next year
and a half. "It was always groping," he said. "He'd draw his hand
deliberately to the inside of my thigh, and over my penis. It would go on
for four or five minutes, sometimes as long as ten."
Placa denies any wrongdoing and has never been formally charged with a
crime. But it is also true that the Diocese of Rockville Center has removed
him from wearing the collar and performing official duties.
"There's ample evidence showing that Placa consistently protected predators,
shrewdly deceived victims, and covered up horrific clergy sex crimes," said
a statement from David Clohessy, national director of the Survivors Network
of those Abused by Priests. SNAP also contends that Placa abused children.
It should also be noted that a Grand Jury report paints a devastating
picture of sexual deviancy and criminality in his Rockville Center Diocese.
According to the National Catholic Reporter:
"The report documents allegations of the rape of cheerleaders and altar
boys, of acts of molestation and seductions in churches, rectories, on
camping trips, and in the homes of the minors who were abused. It tells of
instances in which priests provided minors with pornography and alcohol, and
of cases in which the Diocese received allegations but didn't report them to
the police, but instead transferred the accused priests to other parishes."
In the Suffolk County Supreme Court Grand Jury report, Placa, by his own
admission, is referred to as "Priest F," a priest who engaged in pedophilia.
Even after the grand jury testimony, Giuliani stood by him. In another 2003
New York Times article, Placa described the zero-tolerance sex abuse policy
on priests as "immoral and unchristian." Apparently, in Placa's mind, Christ
condoned such perversions. Judging by his loyalty and support, Presidential
candidate Giuliani, proven transvestite and adulterer, does likewise.
Additionally, the 2002 Newsday story included a quote from Kevin Waldron, a
fellow high school friend who corroborates sex abuse victim Tollner's story,
saying Tollner told him of the events after they happened. The Newsday story
goes on to report:
"A second former student, who asked that his name be withheld, said he
described to Suffolk prosecutors what he called 'the newspaper drill.' 'He
(Placa) always had a New York Times in his office. And he'd sit down next to
you on the couch and open it wide and, inevitably, his hand would brush your
crotch.' 'He did it over and over again, I can't tell you how many times.'
That man said he felt so violated that he wrote Placa an unsigned letter 20
years later, blaming him for his loss of interest in pursuing the
priesthood."
Despite all these allegations, Giuliani hired Placa right after all this
went down, and based on news reports and a call to the Giuliani Partners
office, he remains with him today. And as the New York Times reported in
2002, even amid these strong allegations Giuliani jumped to Placa's defense
saying: "He's one of the people I admire most in the world, and if most
people did half the good that Alan's done, the world would be a wonderful
place." Yes, in Giuliani's world, and in America under his Presidency, child
molesters would run free to prey upon minors, they would protect each other
through religious organizations, and criminals would head police departments
and the Department of Homeland Security. And thus, under Giuliani's rule,
"the world would be a wonderful place."
Every bit of this has been reported over the years in Newsday, the NY Times,
and in books by Jason Berry. You can find the articles, as well as the Grand
Jury report, archived at www.bishop-accountability.org/. The Times
front-paged it when Giuliani hired Placa for his consulting firm.
So why did Giuliani defend and hire the unsavory Alan Placa? Is this his
version of Affirmative Action? We know he recommended his buddy, criminal
cop Kerik, to George W. Bush for heading up Homeland Security. And two-faced
Giuliani, the closet neo-con, is now flip-flopping on the abortion issue,
among others. He tries to curry favor with pro-choice advocates but as
President would probably sabotage women's rights through judicial appointees
that would overturn Roe vs. Wade. If Giuliani is elected we could well see
pedophile priest-lawyers that oppose abortion on "moral grounds" sitting on
the Supreme Court!
And why the lack of media attention to all this today? Suppose John Edwards,
Barack Obama, or Hillary Clinton had given a cozy sinecure to a defrocked
priest credibly accused of pedophilia. What would occur? I'll tell you
what - every newspaper reader, every radio listener, and every television
news watcher in America would be discussing the matter the very next day.
But I'll bet you're learning for the first time right here about Giuliani's
de facto defense of child abuse and staunch support of his probable
pedophile priestly pal.
Aside from his moral issues, do we want a President of the United States
whose definition of freedom is: