Wednesday, August 12, 2015

A Star Is Born: Christopher Hucko -- Republican Candidate #18?

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Photo by the Orland Park (IL) Police Dept.

"Man arrested for vibrator theft offers to show police his penis, before slamming Obama"
-- a New York Daily News headline yesterday

by Noah

I bet the above headline from the New York Daily News caught your eye. What the hell? you probably said. What's next? And I bet you want to read more, right? Here is Laurie Hanna's lead, possibly the dream lead of a newspaperperson's career:
A Chicago man caught with a stolen vibrator in his underwear told cops he had no idea how the device got there, before stripping naked in his cell and shouting derogatory comments about President Obama.
Now you're probably thinking, where do they get these people? In fact, to get a real feel for what a character this guy is, you need to read either the Daily News piece or The Smoking Gun's.

My reaction, though, went a little further. Given the lunacy of the current republican primary season, this man just may be what republican voters are looking for! Forget Trumpy. Trumpy is so yesterday. There's a new loon in town!

It's not just the mere existence or even thought of President Obama that drives republicans over the edge. I've commented before about the fact that there is also something weird about the way the republican mind deals with human sexuality. Both topics drive them batty. And for the 2016 election cycle we have no shortage of republican presidential candidates that epitomize this dual absurdity.

So here I am, proposing one more potential republican candidate for the 2016 presidential nomination. We already have 17 crazies; why not add one more to the mix? Meet candidate #18: Christopher Hucko. Might he end up being the bottom on a Trump-Hucko ticket? Surely this man, like Trumpy, knows how to get our attention.

Far be it from me to be judgmental. Understand that when I talk about republican attitudes toward all things to do with sex and sexuality, I don't mean "weird" in any kinky sense or anything like that -- although there is the whole "Masturbation is murder" crew, and then there's presidential candidate Rick Santorum who's on record as saying that contraception leads to things that are "not okay." (Hint: like pleasure, when we know that sex is only for procreation.)


And you better not be enjoying it!

We've also been hearing a lot lately about republican efforts to defund Planned Parenthood, about their general war on women, including 2012 VP candidate Paul Ryan's hateful attempts to redefine rape, and about their demented homophobia. Current republican presidential candidates Rand Paul and Mike Huckabee have even agreed to appear in an anti-gay "documentary."

Ben Carson? Well, try not to engage him in a conversation about sex in prison. "A lot of people who go into prison," he has said, "go into prison straight and when they come out, they’re gay." This in fact is one of Right Wing Watch's "Five Wildest Ben Carson Quotes: Prison Sex, Nazi America, Health Care Slavery And More." Possibly after you look at the other four quotes, you may want to just avoid any conversation with Ben Carson altogether.

Then there's current leading republican candidate Donald Trump's recent post-debate attacks on Megyn Kelly of FOX "News," saying she had "blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever." Let's let John Oliver deconstruct this one.



Sure, there's no doubt that Megyn was out to get Trumpy for his previous misogynistic comments, but for republicans such sexism is standard fare, and judging from Trumpy's growing poll numbers, it's obviously a plus to republican voters. Besides, Megyn Kelly is not one who should pretend to be classy in such matters, when she herself went on the notoriously misogynistic Howard Stern show and talked about her breasts and her husband's penis.

It's also hard to forget the not-so-long-ago spectacle of a republican-led House of Representatives getting so worked up in a lather over President Clinton getting a BJ from an intern that they released every graphic detail in book form to the media and the public, thinking that that would convince the American public to go along with their impeachment efforts.


LET'S FACE IT, REPUGS VIEW MATTERS OF SEX AND
SEXUALITY DIFFERENTLY FROM NORMAL PEOPLE


With all of this in mind, I give you Christopher Hucko. What, you may ask, are his presidential credentials? Hey, c'mon, what are any of their credentials? I mean, Rick Perry? Scott Walker? Another Bush?

Euphoria G-Spot Delight (in pink)
Well, in addition to the possibility that his surname is a shortened version of Huckabee, Mr. Hucko has been known to sign his name as "Obama is a criminal," as he did when he was asked to sign a Miranda consent form by the officers who collared him with the $48 pink Euphoria G-Spot Delight vibrator that had mysteriously found its way into his underwear. That signature alone will get him tons of republican votes, but Hucko features the perfect storm of being able to rant mindlessly about President Obama and do it while offering to show police his penis (that had been his answer to the question of what he had stuffed in his pants), which he claims has a tattoo of a cherry on it. In short, he's perfect!  Reince Priebus can rest easy now. He's found his man!

Let's ignore the fact that Hucko was arrested after shoplifting the vibrator from a Chicago sex emporium and said he didn't know how it got into his pants. There are plenty of cases of criminal activity not being an impediment to a political career. If bribery is legal, why should being caught stealing a vibrator and stuffing it in your pants end your dream? Which does more harm to society? (And if you think of the delegates who will choose the GOP presidential candidate in Cleveland, how many of them would love to have a pink Euphoria G-Spot Delight stuffed in their underwear? Probably a lot of the women too.)


WILL HUCKO BE ONSTAGE FOR THE NEXT REPUBLICAN DEBATE?

That's not for me to say. But I do know that he would fit right in. In addition, can't you just see him on Hannity, sitting between Pat Robertson and the Duck Dynasty wacko? Hucko is a natural! Can't you see him talking loofahs with Bill-O? (He has a police record, but I can't say for sure that it includes stealing a loofah.)

The quest for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination is already the expected freakshow. But Christopher Hucko could be the cherry to go with the nuts on the sundae. (Don't forget that tattoo of a cherry he says he has on his penis.) We're already seeing some candidates trying to out-Trump Trumpy, but this guy Hucko -- well, the possibilities are endless. What would Trumpy or any of the other 17-and-counting loonies be able to do to top him? Create a line of self-named sex toys to hand out at rallies in Iowa? Will they all appear at the next debate with vibrators standing on their podiums, as if to say, "Hey, Megyn, say hello to my little friend," while the republican audience cheers? I think we've blown right past "binders full of women."

Not to worry about the losers in this primary. They can always become pitchers for Viagra like failed republican presidential candidate Bob Dole did all the way back in 1998.

The only real question is, what do any of these wackjobs do if he ends up getting his party's nomination and has to face Hillary Clinton, assuming she wins hers? What with all of them obviously suffering feelings of inadequacy, all she would have to do is go to the first debate, pull out a vibrator and wave it at her opponent, laughing as she screams, "Mine's bigger!" Game over.
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Friday, January 17, 2014

A Wi-Fi censorship story with a happy ending -- more or less

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Note the "free WI FI" promise right there on the window.

by Ken

This is a good-news, bad-news -- or perhaps glass-half-full, glass-half-empty -- story about open Internet access. No, we're not talking about the recent DC Circuit Court of Appeals overturning the FCC's none-too-vigorous attempt at mandating "Net neutrality," or equal access for all content providers, opening the way for ISPs to offer higher speed for higher pay, very likely putting pressure on poorer providers. No, we're talking about a perennial access problem, especially with Net access in public places: site-blocking by service providers.

The good news is that Tuesday, after a DNAinfo New York report, "Au Bon Pain Blocks Gay and Abortion Sites on Wi-Fi Network," the popular café-bakery chain moved quickly into action.

Rosa Goldensohn noted in her report:
Attempts to use the WiFi on Monday to search the Internet for GLAAD.com, the official website of a well-known gay and lesbian rights organization, were met with an error message that read: "This website is not allowed. This website is categorized as Sexual Orientation and is blocked as part of this network's web content filtering policy."

The same thing happened when a reporter tried to log into websites run by groups from both sides of the abortion debate.

Au Bon Pain's filtering software shut down the website ProLife.com with the message, "This website is categorized as Abortion and is blocked."

Attempts to search for the reproductive rights website sherights.com were also blocked, but the error message was different -- it was blocked as "pornography," according to the filter.

"We write about sexuality and sexual education and breastfeeding. That's the only thing I can come up with," said sherights.com editor and founder Maureen Shaw, who said she was alerted to the issue on Monday.
But by Tuesday morning, as Goldensohn reported, Au Bon Pain had addressed the matter on Twitter:
"We want our cafes to be welcoming places for everyone & will do all we can to make sure every cafe holds up that standard."

"We're not perfect, but will do our best to limit filtering as much as we can," the eatery wrote on their official Twitter account. "We take this very seriously and want to remedy it best we can."
And by Tuesday night Goldensohn was able to report in a subsequent piece that filters that were discovered to have been in place had been removed, and by Wednesday, she noted in an update, many of the previously blocked sites were accessible at six Au Bon Pain locations in Manhattan.

The bad news: Au Bon Pain claims the filters were applied by its Wi-Fi provider ("We're just the innocent bystanders"), but Symantec, the provider, "said it does not control which websites are blocked at Au Bon Pain, beyond giving the company the option to block pornography and attempts to share files."
Au Bon Pain Blames Wi-Fi Security Company for Blocking Gay, Abortion Sites

By Rosa Goldensohn on January 15, 2014 6:04pm | Updated on January 16, 2014 7:10am

MANHATTAN -- Au Bon Pain officials blamed a Wi-Fi security company for blocking customers from viewing gay advocacy and family planning websites in their cafés, calling themselves "innocent bystanders."

The chain removed the filters Tuesday night after a DNAinfo New York report.

The company said Internet security giant Symantec unilaterally instituted the restrictions, which excluded sites categorized as "Abortion" or "Sexual Orientation."

"We're just the innocent bystanders," said an Au Bon Pain spokesperson. "Symantec changed its parameters and didn't communicate it to their customers." The company later apologized on Tumblr.

But Symantec said it does not control which websites are blocked at Au Bon Pain, beyond giving the company the option to block pornography and attempts to share files.

"We don't have the visibility to see what filters were or weren't in place," a spokeswoman wrote in an email Thursday night, adding that she believed the café chain worked with its Wi-Fi provider to create filters.

Wi-Fi users attempting to log on to the websites of the gay rights organization GLAAD, the anti-abortion National Right to Life Committee and the reproductive rights group NARAL Pro-Choice America were met with messages saying the pages were "not allowed," DNAinfo uncovered Tuesday.

A survey of six Au Bon Pain locations in Manhattan Wednesday showed that those sites are now accessible, although the homepage for Parents, Families & Friends of Lesbians and Gays, known as PFLAG, remained blocked.

Joshua Block, an attorney with the "Don't Filter Me" campaign at the American Civil Liberties Union, said such blocks are part of common "family-friendly" Web filter settings.

"When people first hear about the issue, they think this is just an over-sensitive filter that just around the edges sometimes sweeps up non-sexual material," Block said. "These categories by definition are established to identify LGBT-related sites that do not otherwise qualify as pornography."

Block called Web security companies "the gatekeepers."

"It's bad enough that a company has a list of these as potential categories. It's even worse to be providing guidance that steers them toward blocking," he said. "Ultimately, the change that really works is to eliminate the categories."

Maureen Shaw, of the formerly blocked site sherights.com, was impressed with Au Bon Pain's reaction. "This never should have happened in the first place, but I'm very excited that they not only acknowledged my concerns and others' concerns, but they acted quickly to rectify the situation."

But she said the incident is far from resolved. "It is now a larger question of whether or not other public Wi-Fi providers are enacting similar restrictions, either with or without establishments' knowledge of it."

Derrick Jones of National Right to Life said the flap was a rare occasion when his organization agreed with abortion rights advocates. "We would prefer it not be blocked. I'm sure NARAL would feel the same way," he said. "But if we're both blocked, it's kind of a wash."

Arman Dzidzovic contributed reporting.
This content "filtering," in the interest of providing "family-friendly" Web browsing in public places, is a familiar problem to users of these sites. Especially maddening to LGBT users -- both content providers and Web users -- is the assumption that any site that deals in LGBT issues is by definition sexually oriented or outright pornography. Imagine a 13-year-old kid who goes to a café with public Wi-Fi to see if there's a better solution than suicide for his/her unbearable "differentness." There's plenty of help online, but he or she may not get it.
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Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Maybe we'd all be better off if this Thurber fellow did bring the etchings down

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by Ken

I don't know how many times I've looked at this classic Thurber drawing over the years, and of course I've always laughed, but it's never produced me quite the effect -- a hearty guffaw, yes, but also some sort of jolt -- it did today when I saw it again in this week's edition of "From the Desk of Bob Mankoff," the New Yorker cartoon editor's newsletter-slash-blogpost, which I've described here as the most welcome offering I can look forward to finding regularly in my e-mailbox. (We've talked about it a bunch of times, most recently in connection with Bob's promotion of prima cartoonist Roz Chast's invention of Stranger's Day.)
TO SIGN UP FOR BOB MANKOFF'S NEWSLETTER

Remember, it's free. Just go the the magazine's website and look on the right side, way down, for a box with tabs for "NEWSLETTERS," "PODCASTS," and "FEEDS." I don't know from podcasts or feeds, but under the "NEWSLETTERS" tab you'll find checkboxes for "This Week" and "Cartoons" ("A weekly note from the New Yorker's cartoon editor"). Just check it and click on "SUBMIT.")

In blog form Bob's musings this week carry the title "My Sexual Revolution." (The newsletter version has no title.) He begins:
So Ariel Levy tells me that my generation did not invent sex. Bummer! Now I have to cross that off my C.V. It turns out there were previous sexual revolutions in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. If you say so, Ari, but ours had better music.

Still, I always thought the term “sexual revolution” was minted in the sixties, until I came across the 1929 book “Is Sex Necessary?,” by James Thurber and E. B. White. From chapter four, “The Sexual Revolution: Being a Rather Complete Survey of the Entire Sexual Scene”:
The sexual revolution began with Man’s discovery that he was not attractive to Woman, as such. The lion had his mane, the peacock his gorgeous plumage, but Man found himself in a three-button sack suit.


His masculine appearance not only failed to excite Woman, but in many cases it only served to bore her. The result was that Man found it necessary to develop attractive personal traits to offset his dull appearance. He learned to say funny things. . .
(The Ariel levy link is not, as you might guess, to a memo Levy sent to him on the subject, but to a "Books" piece of Ms. Levy's in the September 19 issue called "Novelty Acts," blurbed "The sexual revolutions before the sexual revolution" and starring the master of the orgone box, Wilhelm Reich.)

And then Bob pops in a couple of examples of "funny things about the new sexual freedom, and how it befuddled the Thurberesque male" which Thurber went on to draw, starting with the old favorite we've already seen at the top of this post, and proceeding to this even more cheerful one:


About the etchings drawing, I realize that at this point in time I have very little idea what anybody knows and so entertain the possibility that readers under a certain age may not even recognize the "etchings" gag -- a standard line once comically attributed to would-be roués who attempted to lure innocent young females up to their hives by asking, "Would you like to come up and see my etchings?" (I think all the versions I ever heard involved coming "up," and so presumed either an apartment or a hotel room. I just don't think the gag would translate to a colonial or ranch-style house.)

I don't know what it is about the Thurber etchings cartoon that so tickled and tugged at me today -- something about the poor fellow's utter unawareness of his cluelessness? But I do know where Bob's musings on sexual revolutions past sent me: straight back to the 12th grade at James Madison High School, where as Howie and I have both had frequent occasion to note we jointly served time way back when.

There wasn't much that thrilled me about that education, but there was certainly a smattering of teachers who changed me forever. Howie and I have both written about our 9th-grade English teacher, Mr. Fulmer, the man who pointed out regularly, "In a thousand years we'll all be dead, and all that will matter is our record of truth and beauty," and who never let any of us use the verb "think" when it referred just to stuff dribbling out of our mouths as opposed to being produce by the actual thought process. (Looking back, I find a surprisingly timely 2009 post I was quite fond of called "Do folks like Texas Gov. Rick Perry keep their brains turned off because they're afraid the battery will run down?") But I don't think I've written about my 12th-grade English teacher, Miss Tannenbaum, another great teacher, who in her rather different way was equally unforgiving of teenage bullshit.

And one subject that inevitably came up a whole lot in a class of 12th graders was sex. It was left to Miss Tannenbaum our colossal if hardly original misimpression that we had invented sex. It's a misimpression common (I think) to every generation, going back a lot farther than Dr. Reich. I guess it's the power of sexual impulses that causes most everyone who's just experienced them to imagine that we must surely be the first -- or else the world would be an entirely different place from what it is. On the contrary, I suspect, the world is the way it is precisely because every generation has made this same discovery, and hardly anybody since then has had much clue what to do about it.

Suddenly today I guess I'm thinking that our Etchings Guy may, in his laughable befuddlement, be if not smarter then at least more sensible than the rest of us. Maybe we should just have him bring the damned etchings down.
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Saturday, February 19, 2011

Can we trust the military to police sexual harassment of any kind, let alone the anti-LGB kind?

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The U.S. military's historically pervasive straight-horny-boys-will-be-horny-boys attitude doesn't bode well for its commitment to protecting non-straight servicefolk from discrimination and harassment.

by Ken

JD Smith, co-director of OutServeUS, "the underground network of LGBT actively serving military personnel," has been keeping tabs on orders issued by our various armed forces for implementation of training for the post-DADT era in the military. You can keep track of his tweets here, most recently from Friday:
Received confirmation that the AF has started to distribute at least tier 1 #DADT training. We have @outserveus members that have taken.
Since nobody understands less about tweeting than I do, or gleans less information from them, here are some links I extracted from JD's tweets:

* Marine Commander PowerPoint on "Repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell (DADT)" [2/16]

* "Navy Timeline on Training" [2/8], TwitPics of "marine/navy commander training" [2/10], and a TwitPic of "More training" from the Navy [2/11]

This is all highly encouraging. We're often assured by military types that the military is punctilious about following the law, and can be trusted to adapt to enforce changes in law pertaining to it.

I'm not the only one who has limits to my trust, however. We're still not seeing how the military plans to cope with resistance through the ranks to the elimination of discrimination based on sexual orientation, a mindset that after all is ingrained in the minds of an awful lot of military personnel -- including, for example, many of the chaplains on whose behalf loud and persistent objections to DADT repeal were raised, claiming that these folks were going to be coerced to violate their religious beliefs, as indeed I guess they will be if their religious beliefs are homophobic, as apparently many of theirs are. (We hear a lot of horror stories about the extremely right-wing impact on military personnel of the heavily right-wing evangelical contingent among the chaplains.)

Part of my inherent distrust of the military's will to eliminate discrimination based on sexual orientation is the military's generally dismal record on dealing with matters of sexual conduct altogether.

Society at large, we know, deals very, very badly with sex. Given the basic authoritarian impulse of people who crave power to control, it may be that nothing, not even the lust for money (which after all is usually built into that craving for power), is so disruptive to that control as the lust for flesh. We know that it's part of the most basic human organism, but that only makes it more dangerous to the authoritarian mind set, since after all it means that every human under its nominal control is a potential sexual renegade.

Society at large, as I say, has never gotten a grip on this problem of sexuality, especially since the onset of the famous Sexual Revolution, which aimed precisely at loosening that grip. Military society has it even worse, because it has a long history of exploiting sexual aggressiveness. In the standard military mindset, after all, the qualities that make good soldiers often come hand in glove with -- heck, are thought to be the very same qualities as -- those that produce abusive sexual behavior. As long as it could, the military got by with the old "boys will be boys" attitude.

But then, the straight white male arbiters of social orthodoxy have always had a soft spot for straight white male sexual predation. In the orthodox view, after all, why did God create women except to serve as (a) men's household servants and (b) outlets for men's sexual urges? Isn't it in the Bible? (Well, not exactly, but the straight white male social autocrats manage to find biblical authority for every bit of repressive behavior they like.)

We have a general idea of how hard it has been for the military "good old boys" to deal with the increasing presence of women in their midst, and my guess is that even now an awful lot of U.S. military women would argue that the military still hasn't dealt with their presence, in terms of imagining women as something other than sexual playthings for their horny "boys." I can't think of any reason to imagine that the conduct of openly LGB servicemen would be in any way objectionable or deleterious to military discipline, any more than it is now among the many serving LBG military people -- in contrast to the wildly objectionable sexual conduct of all those boys-being-straight-boys.

In this context I'm more than a little alarmed by this latest development in a story I've been following only vaguely. I suppose I should couch this in terms of "claimed"s and "alleged"s, and from a proper legal standpoint those would be totally appropriate. But we're dealing with military justice here, and military justice rarely recognizes the niceties of the regular kind. And in this instance, does anyone really have any doubt as to who's telling the truth and who's trying to cover its dirty military butt?

From the San Diego LGBT Weekly:
EXCLUSIVE: Joseph Rocha refutes news report that “flawed, unsubstantiated” claims led to his DADT discharge

Posted by LGBT Weekly, Saturday, February 19th, 2011

BY JONATHAN YOUNG

The Associated Press has reported, “the Navy says it wrongly accused Navy dog handler Michael Toussaint of singling out a gay sailor for hazing at kennels he ran in Bahrain.” However, that gay sailor, San Diegan Joseph Rocha, says the AP has their facts totally wrong.

Former Petty Officer Third Class Rocha, who was discharged in 2007 under the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy, says Toussaint singled him out for being gay, causing him mental trauma and his exit from the Navy. The AP released a story on Thursday, citing two anonymous sources, saying, “Two Naval officers now say that Navy officials have found the investigation into Rocha’s charges was flawed, and the claims unsubstantiated.”

In an interview exclusive to the San Diego LGBT Weekly, Rocha says the AP version is not the Navy’s official view, and even though he has high-ranking Naval officials backing him, the AP will not retract nor correct their story.

“The official story is the United States Navy has come to a conclusion as to how to proceed with the discharge of Senior Chief Toussaint, and what type of discharge he would receive, what rank and what pay he would be entitled to after that discharge,” Rocha said. “First thing yesterday (Thursday) morning, the Under Secretary (Juan Garcia, Assistant Navy Secretary for Manpower and Reserve Affairs) contacted me to let me know the decision.”

Garcia’s decision, obtained by the San Diego LGBT Weekly through Rocha, reads:

“I approved the recommendation of the Retirement Grade Determination Board that MACS Toussaint transfer to the Fleet Reserve in paygrade E-8 with an honorable discharge. In making my determination, I thoroughly reviewed the matter, and weighed heavily material provided in the statements recorded during the initial command investigation and the record of proceedings from the Retirement Grade Determination Board.

“Ultimately, MACS Toussaint’s conduct as the Leading Chief Petty Officer assigned to the Military Working Dog Division, Naval Security Forces, Bahrain, did not meet the standards expected of senior enlisted leadership in our Navy. The Secretary of the Navy concurred with the CNO’s decision that Toussaint not be permitted to re-enlist in the United States Navy. However, when looking at his career in its entirety, I have determined that his conduct did not rise to a level sufficient to warrant retirement in a paygrade less than E-8.”

“The official decision is quite simply that the judgments and actions of Senior Chief Toussaint, while in charge of the canine unit in Bahrain, were not what was expected of senior leadership, and did not fit in with the Navy’s core values,” Rocha summarized, adding, “Which is not anything different than what we were expecting.”

The AP reported an entirely different story.

“They (the AP) went on to write 136 words based on two anonymous sources that were not official and made it read like it was coming from the institution of the Navy,” Rocha said. The two sources were never named, and the story read, “The officers spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a private personnel matter.”

The AP contacted Rocha after the first story was released, seeking to get his reaction for a second expanded story.

“They didn’t bother to tell me that the original story and the following story were going to accuse me of being a fraud,” Rocha said. “So I offered a reasonable and respectful quote that reflected the conversation that I had with the Under Secretary. That quote was then used in the longer piece that was used to attack me.”

The second version of the story spread across the country on Friday, with major publications reprinting the report, including versions in The Washington Post newspaper and Advocate magazine.

After reading the AP stories, Rocha immediately called Garcia to confirm the position of the Navy, “which would have been an underhanded insult, considering the conversation we had earlier,” Rocha said. “He insisted that the AP stories were not the position of the Navy.”

Also during the second conversation, Rocha said Garcia already had attempted to contact the AP to correct the story with the accurate report. Garcia also said he was “unclear” to who the anonymous sources were, according to Rocha.

“Essentially he was telling me over the phone that everything the Navy has produced supports what I am saying,” Rocha continued. “Nowhere will it say they made any wrongful accusations, and nowhere will it say they are retracting or going back on what they said a year ago when they first pulled Chief Toussaint out of active duty. And his memos and official writings were consistent with finding of Toussaint leadership and actions that did not fall in line with core values of the United States Navy.”

Repeated emails from Rocha to the AP writer have gone unanswered. Inquiries to the AP from Garcia’s staff have also been answered, according to Rocha. . . .

Now the Navy actually doesn't come off too bad here. Secretary Garcia's version of the decision, while it still sounds to me like a whitewash relative to the Navy's own reckoning of the facts, at least the Navy seems to have made some reckoning of those facts, but this is in a situation that had already become embarrassingly public, and the overall judgement doesn't seem to me to bode well for the kinds of situations that are bound to arise after DADT passes from the military code.

Which still leaves the whole question of where the AP's wildly divergent story came from, and how it became, effectively, the version of public record.
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