Monday on MSNBC’s “The Beat,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) criticized the one-week deadline in the expanded FBI probe of Supreme Court associate justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh.
Blumenthal said, “It’s the right direction, but whether they go far enough and quickly enough remains to be seen. Those 25 witnesses that I sent to the White House and to the FBI along with almost all my colleagues on the Judiciary Committee, Democratic side, are the minimum that ought to be interviewed. As you well know, witnesses can lead to other witnesses that have to be pursued. So I believe that Jeff Flake truly wants a real investigation, not a check the box sham. And that’s what the FBI ought to be doing. Difficult, though, because as you said very well, this deadline is tight and arbitrary. In fact, too accelerated and too artificial to really get the job done.”
On Tuesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Rachel Maddow Show,” former Secretary of State and 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton defended the calls for an FBI investigation into the allegations against Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh made by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and stated the White House and Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee are trying to put Ford “in the dock and try to rush this through.”
Hillary said, “I heard Kellyanne Conway say we shouldn’t be subjecting her to insult, and I think you can’t avoid the appearance of insult if you don’t have an investigation so that she is, you know, able to be evaluated fairly. And what I think the White House and the Republicans on the committee are trying to do is, you know, basically, put her in the dock and try to rush this through.”
Oprah Winfrey supported and help get Barack Obama Elected. I’m done with the damn argument.
The media mogul delivered a powerful speech at the Golden Globes Sunday night, almost immediately launching speculation on the topic.
Bringing a room full of Hollywood’s elite to their feet several times during the speech, Winfrey addressed the Me Too movement head on, lighting up social media with the hashtag #Oprah2020.
“It is not lost on me that at this very moment there are little girls watching me become the first black woman to get this award,” said Winfrey as she collected her Cecil B. DeMille lifetime achievement award.
This is not the first time rumors have circulated regarding Winfrey’s presidential aspirations. Political observers compared her speech to then Sen. Barack Obama’s speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.
Oprah herself has denied that she’s considering a run for president, but her partner Stedman Graham was later quoted as saying she “absolutely” would if people wanted her to.
For some, the specter of an Oprah presidential campaign raises questions on whether the country needs another big name celebrity with no political experience. But many don’t seem to mind.
Yes she will clean up the mess in Hollywood. Looks like she needs to start with her friends.
“I don’t see her as a celebrity, I see her as a leader,” said West Loop resident Kristine Singer.
“As a longtime Chicago resident, she’d have my vote,” said Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx.
According to political veteran Thom Serafin, the bigger question is whether Winfrey would be willing to put herself through a grueling presidential campaign.
“I think she has the ability to educate, the ability to inspire, the ability to legislate. But you have to have the guts and stamina to go out on the campaign trail and take the crap you have to take 24-7. . . She was perfect in that event. She was just perfect. Can she be perfect in Iowa, New Hampshire, in Peoria where Caterpillar is leaving and there are no jobs? Those are questions I would suggest she has no interest in getting into,” said Serafin.
For those who’ve known her from the beginning, like Dennis Swanson, whom Winfrey thanked on stage for giving her a chance on AM Chicago many years ago, the possibility is not that far-fetched.
“I said, are you going to be able to handle success, that is my concern. She said, ‘Do you think I’ll be that successful?’ I said ‘Lady, you’re going to cost me a lot of money but you are going to shoot the lights out,'” said Swanson.
Winfrey finished her speech to a standing ovation.
“A new day is on the horizon. When that new day finally dawns, it will be because of a lot of magnificent women…and some pretty phenomenal men fighting hard to make sure they become the leaders who take us to the time nobody ever has to say ‘me too’ again,” Winfrey said.
Only time will tell whether an Oprah for President campaign will materialize. If social media is any indication, just the idea of it has sparked tremendous debate. Oprah related posts have reached more than 1.5 million people on ABC7’s Facebook page.
A full transcript of Winfrey’s speech can be found here.
WISE gave John Skipper and Award and now we get the damn truth right?
Nearly two weeks ago, ESPN President John Skipper shocked the media world by suddenly resigning from his position at the “Worldwide Leader.”
At the time, Skipper said he needed to resign to deal with substance abuse issues.
In a statement, Skipper said:
I have struggled for many years with a substance addiction. I have decided that the most important thing I can do right now is to take care of my problem.
I have disclosed that decision to the company, and we mutually agreed that it was appropriate that I resign. I will always appreciate the human understanding and warmth that Bob (Iger) displayed here and always.
I come to this public disclosure with embarrassment, trepidation and a feeling of having let others I care about down.
As I deal with this issue and what it means to me and my family, I ask for appropriate privacy and a little understanding.
To my colleagues at ESPN, it has been a privilege. I take great pride in your accomplishments and have complete confidence in your collective ability to continue ESPN’s success.
This explanation seemed rather suspicious. Since Skipper had just signed a major contract extension the month before his resignation.
At the time, Breitbart Sports noted:
The timing of Skipper’s resignation seems a bit of a mystery. Skipper had just signed a multi-year contract extension in November. How does one develop a long-term substance problem in a month? Perhaps ESPN just became aware of Skipper’s issue in the last month, though, that too would seem unlikely. Moreover, it’s likely that ESPN would at least attempt to offer some kind of counseling as opposed to compelling Skipper to resign, if they just found out about Skipper’s issue after signing him to a brand new deal.
Could there be something another, bigger story behind this announcement?
Well, Clay Travis of Fox Sports Radio and Outkick the Coverage reports that there is something bigger indeed, behind Skipper’s resignation. Travis reports that in the days following Skipper’s announcement, several reports came to him offering a much different explanation for Skipper’s immediate departure.
“In the next couple of days I was told by multiple sources I trust inside ESPN that the reason for Skipper’s “resignation” was because of sexual harassment issues inside the company. In the wake of the Boston Globe story about sexual harassment I was told Skipper’s own issues suddenly emerged and that was why the resignation happened so abruptly.
And ESPN decided to blame substance abuse issues instead.”
Travis also poked a hole in Skipper/ESPN’s “substance abuse” claim by tweeting photos from a tipster, which appear to show Skipper and ESPN radio host Dan LeBatard at a bar in North Carolina:
A trip out to have a couple of drinks with your friend would all be perfectly normal and a total non-story except for the fact that Skipper just resigned from ESPN 11 days ago citing his struggles with substance addiction and his desire to get help for that addiction.
Now maybe Skipper wasn’t addicted to alcohol — and it was some other drug instead — but if you have such an issue with substance addiction that you need to immediately resign from ESPN should you really be out drinking 11 days later with one of the most prominent employees at your former company? And if you’re Skipper’s good friend, Dan LeBatard, would you let your friend go out drinking with you if you knew he had a true issue with substance abuse and you were crying about it on your radio show 11 days ago?
That seems highly unlikely.
That does indeed seem unlikely. ESPN wouldn’t be unique among major media and entertainment organizations, for forcing out high-profile executives or performers over sexual harassment charges. After all, the last few months have seen dozens of actors, journalists, comedians, politicians, and others, face removal for some form of sexual misconduct.
So why lie about it? If in fact, ESPN is lying about the reasons for Skipper’s resignation?
The answer may be found higher up the food chain. Disney CEO Bob Iger is a rumored2020 Democrat presidential candidate. Considering how crucial the female vote is, especially in a Democratic primary, one would think that Iger would move aggressively to quash any potentially damaging sexual harassment scandal at one of his larger networks.
Would Iger engage in that type of politically-calculated micromanagement?
Well, he’s done it before.
In the weeks after Jemele Hill called President Trump a “white supremacist” on Twitter, Iger personally intervened to prevent Hill’s suspension. Now, why would Iger do that?
Could it be because of Iger’s concern that the optics of suspending Hill, who is black, for criticizing President Trump; could be interpreted as Iger siding with Trump against a black female employee? Which would leave his Democrat primary opponents with a strong and heavy argument that he’s not the right candidate to protect black people from the “cruel and racist” Republicans?
That seems like an extremely plausible theory.
And if that seems like a plausible theory, is it so far-fetched that Iger would concoct a story about substance abuse to conceal a high-profile sexual harassment scandal, which may or may not extend far beyond John Skipper?
Doesn’t seem like that big of a stretch at all, does it?
Cardinal Bernard Law, symbol of church sex abuse scandal, dead at 86
Cardinal Bernard Law, the former Boston archbishop who resigned in disgrace during the Catholic Church’s sex abuse scandal, has died, the Vatican confirmed. He was 86.
Law died in Rome, where he had served as archpriest of the Papal Liberian Basilica of St. Mary Major after he was forced to resign in 2002 as archbishop of Boston.
Law’s name became emblematic of the scandal that continues to trouble the church and its followers around the globe after it was revealed the he and other bishops before him had covered for pedophile priests in the Boston Archdiocese.
Law at the time apologized during a news conference to victims of abuse by a priest, John Geoghan, who had been moved from parish to parish, despite Law’s knowledge of his abuse of young boys. Law insisted Geoghan’s abuse was in the past.
Cardinal Bernard Francis Law looks on as Pope Francis celebrates Mass in 2016 in Vatican City.
Geoghan was eventually convicted of indecent assault and battery on a 10-year-old boy.
Law never faced criminal sanctions for his role in allowing abusive priests to remain in church parishes. The scandal reverberated through the church, exposing similar allegations worldwide that compromised its moral authority and led to years of multimillion-dollar settlements.
The Vatican early Wednesday issued a one-line news release, reading, “Cardinal Bernard Law died early this morning after a long illness.”
Survivors recount betrayal
To his detractors, Law’s second career at the Vatican was a slap in the face to victims of church sex abuse, one that further undermined the church’s legitimacy.
“Survivors of child sexual assault in Boston, who were first betrayed by Law’s cover-up of sex crimes and then doubly betrayed by his subsequent promotion to Rome, were those most hurt,” according to a statement after his death from Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. “No words can convey the pain these survivors and their loved ones suffered.”
The group advised the Vatican to keep the abuse survivors in mind when planning Law’s funeral. It asked: “Every single Catholic should ask Pope Francis and the Vatican why. Why Law’s life was so celebrated when Boston’s clergy sex abuse survivors suffered so greatly? Why was Law promoted when Boston’s Catholic children were sexually abused, ignored, and pushed aside time and time again?”
Law’s successor as Boston’s archbishop, Cardinal Sean O’Malley, said Wednesday that Law “served at a time when the church failed seriously in its responsibilities to provide pastoral care for her people, and with tragic outcomes failed to care for the children of our parish communities.”
“I recognize that Cardinal Law’s passing brings forth a wide range of emotions on the part of many people. I am particularly cognizant of all who experienced the trauma of sexual abuse by clergy, whose lives were so seriously impacted by those crimes, and their families and loved ones,” O’Malley said.
“To those men and women,” O’Malley added, “I offer my sincere apologies for the harm they suffered, my continued prayers and my promise that the archdiocese will support them in their effort to achieve healing.”
Widespread child abuse by the Catholic clergy in the Boston Archdiocese was uncovered by The Boston Globe’s Spotlight investigative reporting team, which won a Pulitzer Prize for its efforts. A big-screen dramatization of the team’s investigation in the 2015 movie, “Spotlight,” won the 2016 Best Picture Academy Award, bringing the story to a much wider audience.
Rise of Boston’s spiritual leader
Law was born in Torreon, Mexico, on November 4, 1931, to Helen and Bernard Law, an Air Force colonel. He completed his postgraduate studies at St. Joseph’s Seminary in Louisiana and at the Pontifical College Josephinum in Columbus, Ohio. He was ordained as a priest on May 21, 1961, in the diocese of Natchez-Jackson, Mississippi, and became vicar general of that diocese in 1971.
In 1973, he was appointed bishop of the Springfield-Cape Girardeau diocese in southern Missouri. He served as chair of the Bishops’ Committee on Ecumenical and Interracial Affairs, and in 1976, he was named to the Vatican Commission on Religious Relations with Jews.
The posts were stepping stones to his becoming the spiritual leader of Boston’s large and influential Catholic community. In 1984, Pope John Paul II appointed Law to be the archbishop of the Boston Archdiocese, with its 362 parishes serving 2.1 million members. That same year, Law received a letter from a bishop expressing concerns about then-Rev. Geoghan. Law assigned Geoghan to another parish despite the allegations.
In 1985, Pope John Paul II elevated Law to cardinal, one of just 13 Americans holding that office at the time.
Calls for resignation
Law attempted to resign as Archbishop of Boston in April 2002, but Pope John Paul II rejected his request. In 2002, a judge presiding over the child rape case of Rev. Paul Shanley ordered Cardinal Law to be deposed by lawyers of one of Shanley’s victims.
Law testified about his supervision of Geoghan in 2002, saying he relied on his assistants to investigate charges of abuse. In May 2002, he apologized for his role in the clergy abuse scandal in a letter distributed throughout the archdiocese. But he denied knowledge of sexual abuse allegations against Shanley until 1993.
In August 2002, Law appeared in court to testify about a settlement reached between the archdiocese of Boston and victims of clergy abuse. The archdiocese rescinded the monetary offer shortly afterward.
That December, as calls grew for him to resign, Law was subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury investigating “possible criminal violations by church officials who supervised priests accused of sexually abusing children.” Days later, he resigned as chairman of the board of trustees of the Catholic University of America, followed by his resignation as archbishop of Boston.
Catholic Church abuses under scrutiny
The breakdown of trust in the Catholic Church continues to reverberate around the world.
This month, the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse delivered, after five years of work, 189 recommendations to address what it described as a “serious failure” by Australia’s institutions to protect its most vulnerable citizens.
The country’s senior Catholic leaders, however, rejected recommendations by the wide-reaching investigation, declining to end mandatory celibacy for priests and break the secrecy of confession.
Of survivors who reported abuse in a religious institution, more than 60% said it occurred in a Catholic organization, the report found.
Kansas Dem Andrea Ramsey, accused of sexual harassment, will drop out of US House race
Andrea Ramsey, a Democratic candidate for Congress, will drop out of the race after the Kansas City Star asked her about accusations in a 2005 lawsuit that she sexually harassed and retaliated against a male subordinate who said he had rejected her advances.
Multiple sources with knowledge of the case told The Star that the man reached a settlement with LabOne, the company where Ramsey was executive vice president of human resources. Court documents show that the man, Gary Funkhouser, and LabOne agreed to dismiss the case permanently after mediation in 2006.
Ramsey, a 56-year-old retired business executive from Leawood, was one of the Democratic candidates vying to challenge Republican Rep. Kevin Yoder in 2018 in Kansas’ 3rd District.
She was running with the endorsement of Emily’s List, a liberal women’s group that has raised more than a half-million dollars to help female candidates who support abortion rights
Ramsey will drop out on Friday, her campaign said.
“In its rush to claim the high ground in our roiling national conversation about harassment, the Democratic Party has implemented a zero tolerance standard,” Ramsey said in a statement Friday. “For me, that means a vindictive, terminated employee’s false allegations are enough for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) to decide not to support our promising campaign. We are in a national moment where rough justice stands in place of careful analysis, nuance and due process.”
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which has not endorsed anyone in the race, said in a statement that members and candidates must all be held to the highest standard.
“If anyone is guilty of sexual harassment or sexual assault, that person should not hold public office,” said committee spokeswoman Meredith Kelly.
Emily’s List said in a statement on Friday that the group supported Ramsey’s decision to drop out of the race and wished her well.
Ramsey was not a party to the lawsuit or the settlement, although she’s referred to throughout the complaint as Andrea Thomas, her name before she married her husband in late 2006. She denied the allegations to the Star in two interviews over the last two weeks and said the lawsuit is surfacing now for political purposes.
Ramsey repeatedly said that she was not aware of any settlement in the case, but said that if she had been a party to the case she would have opposed settling.
“Had those allegations, those false allegations, been brought against me directly instead of the company I would have fought to exonerate my name. I never would’ve settled,” Ramsey said in an interview on Thursday. “And I would have sued the disgruntled, vindictive employee for defamation.”
Individual supervisors are not named as defendants in federal sexual harassment or discrimination lawsuits because they are not considered employers under Title VII, the law that protects employees from discrimination, harassment and retaliation for color, race, sex and national origin.
The lawsuit has been circulating in Kansas political circles as the first-time candidate runs for Congress amid a wave of sexual misconduct allegations that have rocked the political, entertainment and journalism industries.
The national Democratic Party is targeting Kansas’ 3rd District as part of its push to reclaim control of the House. Yoder is one of 23 GOP representatives seeking re-election in districts where Democrat Hillary Clinton won more votes than Republican Donald Trump.
The allegations against Ramsey were outlined in a lawsuit filed by Funkhouser against LabOne and in a complaint to the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
Reached by phone, Funkhouser would not discuss the case.
“All I can say is the matter has been resolved,” he said.
In the EEOC complaint, which alleged sex discrimination and retaliation by LabOne, Funkhouser accused Ramsey of subjecting him to “unwelcome and inappropriate sexual comments and innuendos” beginning in September 2004, when he was a LabOne human resources manager.
In late March 2005, Ramsey made sexual advances toward him on a business trip, Funkhouser alleged in the complaint.
“After I told her I was not interested in having a sexual relationship with her, she stopped talking to me,” he wrote. “In the office she completely ignored me and avoided having any contact with me.”
Ramsey even moved him out of his office into a cubicle far from her office, Funkhouser wrote.
Before he rejected her advances, Ramsey “repeatedly told me she heard great things from others about my performance,” Funkhouser wrote. “After I rejected her, she told me she now was hearing bad things about my performance and on June 13, 2005, terminated my employment.”
The EEOC closed its file on Funkhouser’s charges of discrimination and retaliation in October 2005, noting that an investigation was unable to conclude whether any statutes had been violated. The document did not certify that LabOne was in compliance with employment law, however, and informed Funkhouser that he had a right to sue the company.
Funkhouser then sued LabOne in federal court.
LabOne denied the allegations and said Funkhouser’s termination was “non-discriminatory and non-retaliatory.”
Ramsey told The Star she made the decision to eliminate Funkhouser’s job in conjunction with LabOne management.
“It became clear to me that he wasn’t managing his subordinates adequately,” she said. “… He didn’t have open lines of communication with his subordinates and furthermore there was this additional layer of management.”
She also said in a second interview that she has no memory of the business trip, noting that 12 years had passed.
The lawsuit was still pending in April 2006 when Ramsey retired from LabOne. At the time, LabOne was being acquired by Quest Diagnostics, a company Ramsey had worked for until 2004. She told the Star she had no interest in working for such a large company again, and she wanted to spend more time with her children, who were 8 and 10 at the time.
Later that month, Ramsey took a part-time job as senior counsel for Black & Veatch, an international engineering firm based in Overland Park.
In July 2006, LabOne and Funkhouser agreed to dismiss the case without the possibility of bringing it again.
Quest Diagnostics declined to comment on behalf of LabOne, saying its policy is not to comment on litigation.
Shirley Gaufin, who was head of HR at Black & Veatch from 2002 to 2011, described Ramsey as an exceptional colleague. “All I heard was praise,” said Gaufin, who has donated to Ramsey’s campaign.
Ramsey left Black & Veatch in October 2012 after six years as the company’s employment attorney.
She served as board chair at the nonprofit Turner House Children’s Clinic in Wyandotte County from 2015 until she stepped down in May to launch her congressional campaign.
Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/news/politics-government/article189931704.html#storylink=cpy
