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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: George Coyne who wrote (342077)	1/12/2003 12:56:03 AM
From: Raymond Duray	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

BUSH'S FOLLY -- PICKERING PERJURY SCANDAL -- Media Silence Stirs Public Outburst mediawhoresonline.net THE PICKERING PERJURY SCANDAL Bush Nominee Perjured Self Not Once, But Twice, Maybe More Under Oath? You Betcha! But GOP Says It's OK To Lie About Segregation Media Silence Stirs Public Outburst Stakes have risen in the looming fight over the White House's re-nomination of Charles Pickering to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, with the discovery that Pickering has perjured himself more than once in sworn testimony before the U.S. Senate. The first incident -- buried by most of the news media, but unearthed now by Joe Conason -- involved Pickering's testimony in 1990 regarding his involvement with the notorious Mississippi Sovereignty Commission. At the hearings on his confirmation for a federal judgeship, Pickering flatly asserted that he had never had any contact with the commission. It was, at the time, impossible to contradict his claim because the commission's files were sealed -- a sealing for which Pickering had voted in favor as a Mississippi state senator in the 1970's. Unfortunately for Pickering, public interest law suits forced the release of the commission's records in 1998. And those records plainly revealed that Pickering had lied under oath -- for they contain the information that Pickering was, in fact, in direct communication with the commission in 1972 over a union fight in his home town of Laurel. The documentation shows that Pickering was especially interested in the possible influence within the union of a civil rights organization, the Southern Conference Educational Fund. Perjury number one. In 2002, when testifying again before the Senate, Pickering admitted that he had, indeed, had contact with the commission. Amazingly, none of the senators, nor anyone in the media, noted that this amounted to an admission of Pickering's perjury twelve years earlier. Even more amazingly, Pickering proceeded to perjure himself again, telling the Senate that his concerns in 1972 were over possible infiltration of a union by the Ku Klux Klan. That testimony helped Pickering back up his shoddy claims that he has long been a fighter for civil rights. But that testimony was a lie, delivered under oath. Perjury number two. In other ways, Pickering has testified under oath in highly misleading ways that may amount to perjury. In 2002, for example, he suggested that his former law partner (and former Mississippi lieutenant governor) the late Carrol Gartin, was not a segregationist. Only when confronted with hard evidence to the contrary by Senator Dick Durbin did Pickering grudgingly alter his claims. The Gartin connection opens up even more strong possibilities that Pickering has testified untruthfully under oath, and even committed additional perjury. Gartin was a major member of the sovereignty commission until his death in 1966. He personally directed numerous efforts to suppress civil rights activities and spy on civil rights activists at the height of the struggle of desegregation. The records of those efforts, in the unsealed Sovereignty Commission files, leave no question at all that Gartin was a dedicated and forceful leader of the segregationist white power structure that resisted civil rights reform at every turn -- going so far as to smear civil rights activists as bunch of "queers, quacks, quirks, political agitators and possibly some communists." This man was Charles Pickering's law partner in the town of Laurel for years following his graduation from law school. He was Pickering's closest professional associate and long-time personal friend. And yet Pickering now wants the Senate to believe that he knew nothing of the Sovereignty Commission's activities -- and that Carroll Gartin, his partner, was not really a segregationist! Pickering's GOP supporters have launched a particularly sleazy and mendacious campaign to make him look like a heroic defender of equal rights in Mississippi. Senator Mitch McConnell has been vociferous in praising Pickering's "moral courage" and his record of standing up for "victims of racial injustice." Yet most of this stems from Pickering's brief testimony in 1967 against a Klan leader, at a time when the Klan's violence had become a deep concern to the bigshots in Laurel. Testifying against a Klansman in 1967 -- commendable though it is -- hardly makes Pickering a courageous force for civil rights. As Pickering himself claimed, with other leading citizens, in 1967, his testimony against the Klansman went hand in hand with his unswerving belief in "continuing our Southern way of life," and his certainty that much of the real "turmoil and racial hatred" had been stirred up by civil rights workers -- "outside agitators" -- and not those who racist thugs attacked them. In short, Pickering proclaimed his desire to retain segregation, but to do so peaceably. For Sen. McConnell and others to try and turn this into a beacon of racial justice isn't perjury -- but only because Sen. McConnell is not under oath. Charles Pickering, however, is a serial perjurer. All of the documents prove that. The only thing that is unclear is just how often he has committed perjury. It is especially telling that the same Republican Party and news media that have turned a blind eye to Pickering's perjuries about segregation were more than happy to force a constitutional crisis in 1998 over Bill Clinton's misleading testimony about sex. By the GOP's standards, Charles Pickering ought to be summarily impeached and removed from his position as a federal court judge. Instead, the Republicans are trying to elevate him to the Federal Court of Appeals!! While the media stay virtually silent. It is time, at last, for Pickering's perjuries to receive the attention and the condemnation they deserve -- flatly disqualifying him, quite apart from the rest of his sorry record, for service on the Court of Appeals.