Let’s call the whole thing off
Here’s the New York Times on the Hamsher/House business:
David House and blogger Jane Hamsher say in a statement they had not had problems previously driving onto the Quantico base. But they say they were detained and unable to visit Army Pfc. Bradley Manning on Sunday.
Quantico spokesman Col. Thomas V. Johnson says the car was towed after the pair could not provide proof of insurance and guards found the vehicle’s license plates had expired. He says both weren’t detained.
Manning’s civilian attorney said Friday he has filed a complaint over Manning’s treatment. The former intelligence analyst in Iraq is being held while the Army determines whether he’ll be tried.
Detained? Not Detained? Turned Away? Oh semantics — how delightful you are.
Given that Hamsher has a credibility problem and given that Quantico has obvious reasons to downplay the incident, I’d be interested to know how and why Hamsher and House were held or detained. Was it the expired license plates and registration? Is the Army trying to further isolate Manning? Did they have to wait for the tow truck to deal with the car? Was it the petition?
These are going to be the important questions as we prepare for Hamsher, et al. vs. The Marines.
I don’t want to speculate, but it would be irresponsible not to.
[cross-posted here at Angry Black Lady Chronicles]
Tom Hilton
I am shocked to find that the biggest story at FDL right now is just another bit of Jane Hamsher’s self-dramatizing mendacity.
Shocked, I say.
Linda Featheringill
Regardless of what I may think of Jane, I do think that this sort of publicity might be good for Private Manning’s health. And if it does Private M good, I’ll tolerate the nonsense.
mistermix
If I had to speculate, which, of course, is a moral necessity, I’d assume that the Marines decided to do whatever they could to fuck with Hamsher, and Hamsher decided to make the biggest deal possible over the Marines’ decision to deny entrance over something that’s really not their business (an expired state auto license).
In other words, neither party covered themselves in glory, and the whole thing is going to be an ugly mudfight. Bleagh.
John Cole
Oh, cool, another piefight.
Meanwhile, on orders from the higher brass, Bradley Manning’s one visiting period a week was interrupted. But hey, we all like attacking Jane, so I guess that is what matters.
John Cole
The only thing left from this thread is how long it will take for the usual idiots to start the “John/Jane foreplay” nonsense.
DougJ DougJson
@mistermix:
I agree. But the difference is that Hamsher is smart to dramatize it as much as possible. I think she’s playing this well in terms of bringing attention to the issue.
Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
My guess would be that everybody’s lying. I don’t trust Hamsher and I don’t trust the marines. Who the hell knows what happened? People often seem not to understand just how important trust is, and that it’s awfully hard to win back once you’ve pissed it away.
Joe Beese
Private Manning is being psychologically tortured. And apparently the government has declared open season on his supporters as well.
But Jane Hamsher doesn’t like Obama so she immediately earns equal co-villain status in this story.
You die-hards are a sad, pathetic lot.
Bob In Pacifica
Hmm. From FDL it sounds like the Marines were screwing with Hamsher and House. I would expect them to do that. Abuse of police power? What’s so surprising about that?
ABL, don’t you think that maybe you have credibility problems in always being angry about FDL?
In any case, I’ll go to source to suss out what happened rather that the echo.
mikefromArlington
If Obama doesn’t address this issue in his SOTU it’ll be just another failure in a long string of failures of his leadership.
Vote Nader 2012!
Maybe if Jane and her merry followers weren’t so busy attacking everyone who supports the President as Obamabots and branding him as a corporate sellout regardless of his actions, people would show more sympathy.
Admiral_Komack
I blame Obama.
Sure, he’s the leader of the free world and all, but couldn’t he have simply taken the time to make sure that Jane Hamsher has her car insurance paid and her license tags current?
He should have called the GEICO gekco on Jane’s behalf; it just would have taken fifteen minutes…
Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
I love that movie. And by the way, my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives.
Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
@Admiral_Komack:
And it would have saved America 15% on all our car insurance!
General Stuck
That would be this idiot. So not long. And I think it is pure diabolical, the higher ups conspiring to make Jane forget to renew her registration and keep a copy of proof of insurance. Pure authoritarian state type shit that is. Though it is sad Manning didn’t get to have his visitor, I do agree.
Admiral_Komack
@Joe Beese:
“You die-hards are a sad, pathetic lot.”
But not as sad and pathetic as you.
Thanks for playing.
Linda Featheringill
@DougJ DougJson:
Yes.
Admiral_Komack
@Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy (formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
I want my pony, damnit!
And the public option!
Obama promised ME, personally!
Although he never ACTUALLY told me, he did…really, he did…
mikefromArlington
So we’ve come to the conclusion Obama, via Hillary, implanted a device in Hamsher’s appt. which causes memory lapses, thus allowing her to forget not only her registration and allowing her tags to expire but also preventing her from placing an insurance card into her car documents!
Diabolical! Pure genius!
Maybe next they can spike her drink with a “don’t always play the poor victim” pill. If she’s going to play politics and attack, attack, attack then she should grow up and learn to take criticism thrown back at her. I understand it’s her way of getting her followers to circle the wagon around her and keep her employed.
General Stuck
Now all we need is a post or two on wikileaks leaking the ME peace talk cables to get this blog up to defcon 1. Not me though, I will be tuning my cupid bow.
The Moar You Know
@mistermix: It is their business, it’s one of the main ways that they check that the person on base is who they say they are. Every base I’ve been on in the last 25 years has required (and state so up front) that you HAVE to have a valid driver’s license, registration, and proof of insurance. If I’m one day expired on anything, I can’t even drive to the gate. This requirement is not a mystery to anyone.
Based on my experiences at getting on various branch bases, I’d say that the folks at Quantico bent over backwards to accommodate Jane (I can’t get on a base unless I have a valid and approved visit request from someone at the facility and have actual work to do on said base) until she finally, as is her wont, pushed the envelope a bit too far, and then she got the “by the book” treatment. Which is getting your vehicle towed and getting an MP escort to the base pedestrian entrance. Is it harsh? Maybe, but it’s how it is done, and as I said earlier, they tell you what the rules are up front.
homerhk
Look: I cannot stand the woman and think her website is an infested lake that attracts all the weirdos. But – and this is like my arse, a big but – this does seem like a silly thing for the marines to do. Whether or not I understand why they did it (and I do, a little, you don’t screw around with marines etc.) and whether or not I think Bradley Manning deserves to have the book thrown at him (I do, in a rule of law kind of way) it does make me feel extremely disappointed in the government as a whole. Of course this precise behaviour isn’t down to Obama but the conditions in which Manning is being kept is, ultimately, down to him and there is no doubt that even I – as big an O-bot as there could be – am disheartened by it albeit unsurprised.
Corey
Is this a real post?
I mean, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything this mendacious on Balloon Juice, like, ever.
Edit: After posting, I agree with Joe Beese; Jane Hamsher’s the bete noire of the O-tards, therefore she’s somehow culpable for her detention without cause, or she’s exaggerating the situation? This is some shameful shit.
Remfin
Some people need to decide if she has a “credibility” problem or a “lying” problem, because there is a pretty stark difference between the two. People with credibility problems tend to leave out facts or use words that mislead, whereas people with lying problems just make things up entirely.
Jane outright said directly she was prevented from leaving a number of times during the whole Twitter run yesterday. Either she was outright lying or she was not. Either accuse her of lying or quit going on about her “credibility.”
If she was prevented from leaving that is a custodial detention, full-stop, period. In civilian life that triggers the need for Miranda and is essentially the same thing as an arrest. Just because the Military doesn’t think of that as “detainment” does not mean it isn’t.
mistermix
@DougJ DougJson: Is Hamsher’s goal to make noise or do something? She could have ridden a demolition derby car to Quantico and gotten arrested and been even more of a noisy martyr.
Or she could have ridden in a car that was properly registered and insured and been turned back for a truly abhorrent reason (the Marines are conspiring to isolate Manning and don’t want him to know that 40K people are behind him). That would have been worth the noise she’s making.
Instead, we have a sideshow mudfight pissing match about a technicality. The Marines won this one, because the MSM is going to report it as Jane’s fault.
If her goal is to get some publicity, get it for the right reason, dammit.
Woodrowfan
An expired license plate? Jane live sin northern VA and the cops here seem to love to pull you over and give you a ticket for that. If true then she either 1) didn’t register her car for another year which means she didn’t pay the state her yearly fee (a tax) or 2) she didn’t pay her Arlington/Fairfax property tax. It could also mean 3) she didn’t have an uptodate yearly inspection sticker on her car.
Frankly I’m wondering how any responsible adult could forget to do any of those things for long AND not have proof of insurance, which is also in required in Virginia. OK, I can see it happening if you are unemployed or otherwise having money problems, but that doesn’t seem to be Jane’s problem here.
and yeah, it sounds like the Marines are screwing with her. A buddy who worked as a guard at a DC area federal facility said the gate guards are all trained to deal with difficult situations as they often get political protesters, nut jobs, lost tourists, the merely curious, etc. They can range from the totally harmless to the very, very dangerous, but the guards are expected to be able to politely and professionally deal with each (a standard they occasionally fail)
General Stuck
@homerhk:
You know, I am at the point where I mostly agree. While I don’t think Manning is being singled out for extra harsh treatment per isolation and POI status, there comes a point where length of time under these harsh conditions becomes a type of torture. I suspect we are at that point, or very near, and the fellow needs to be tried pronto.
Ash Can
@Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy (formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
THIS. With either side having such an obvious interest in promoting their side of things, and with either side suffering from an equally obvious trust deficit, this is a classic he-said/she-said scenario that I’m having great difficulty giving a tinker’s damn about.
Bradley Manning should be treated humanely while in custody, brought to trial quickly, and given a fair hearing. Period. Everything else is nothing but static. If, as Linda Featheringill speculates above, this kerfluffle ultimately helps Manning, then so much the better, and I’ll take back my words about this being a needless distraction and non-story. In the meantime, though, BFD.
Woodrowfan
@The Moar You Know:
I agree. I’ve gone onto several bases in the DC area (not Quantico) most recently for a promotion party, and the guards have always been polite but very non-nonsense…
of course it’s possible she met with some jerks….
liberal
@Joe Beese:
This.
cathyx
If you read Jane’s account of the event, she says that she doesn’t think it had anything to do with her and everything to do with keeping House from visiting Manning. She was told repeatedly from the moment that she arrived that orders were coming from above. She thinks that they do not want anyone seeing Manning’s condition. They were detaining them until visiting hours were over.
FFrank
As a former Gate MP, if you note expired stickers on a vehicle you are supposed to prevent it from going into the base. Any High security base, part of security is looking for things that can be signs of security risk. An expired plate is one.
The the next step would be to ask for id and registration and proof of insurance. And the car would be throughly searched. If there were no security violations, the MPs are Law Officers and you’re not allowed to let that person drive without insurance and that does prompt to happen.
Sometimes MP’s are not the sharpest tools in the shed but we do eventually to catch things like expired plates. Or they could be screwing with them by doing there job which MP’s love to do. Security at base after 9-11 is still an issue and now there is alot more attention put into looking at the gates.
Either way the publicity is good for manning. But who ever owns that car needs to get there act together so they don’t get hassled again.
mikefromArlington
LOL. So her or whomever the car belonged to being irresponsible and not keeping her registration up to date and not carrying her insurance card in her car has turned her into the victim again.
She’s like the anti-Palin.
Jeff Fecke
@mistermix:
This, precisely. I’m not mad at Jane for being Jane. I’m mad at Jane for screwing up what should have been a good chance to get publicity for the Marines’ real mistreatment of Manning. Instead, we get a he-said-she-said, and as ABL has pointed out, Jane hasn’t exactly established her credibility.
And so we get a muddle, and most people will back the Marines in the muddle, and Manning will still be in solitary, and we won’t get anywhere.
AxelFoley
@John Cole:
Admit it, John. You DO want to get in Jane’s pants.
Go ‘head, bro. I ain’t mad atcha.
Joe Raison
the one with the credibility problem is angry (oooooooh she must be right, she’s angry!) black lady. I’ve never seen anything written by her on this site except bitching about Jane Hamsher. Is that the sum total of your game, bitching about Firedog Lake? That’s the biggest problem facing the country, facing angry black lady, that you don’t like Jane Hamsher ?
madmommy
Something is odd about this whole thing. Wouldn’t it be rather easy to prove whether she had proper tags, insurance, etc? My auto insurance card has the range of dates in which it is valid printed on it, i.e. 1/1/10-1/31/11, and the inspection sticker and registration for my car do too. s this not the case everywhere? And would the MP’s not document in some way what they say happened?
It might be my lack of sleep (due to sick kidlet) but this seems like a big to-do that can easily be resolved without the “he said/she said” angle.
Herbal Infusion Bagger
Manning is a traitor, just the same as Aldrich Ames or Scooter Libby or Kim Philby, but on a grander scale.
Turning him into a martyr is repulsive.
geg6
@cathyx:
Thus the problem…Jane has no credibility. And we all knew that the Marines would frame it as they have. Two entities, both of whom I have little trust in, are telling different stories.
I think that this is a tempest in a teapot, personally. I don’t fully believe either one and, since it’s a he said/she said situation here, I choose to believe that both parties are full of crap in their framing and the truth lies somewhere in between.
mikefromArlington
“And would the MP’s not document in some way what they say happened?”
From above:
Here’s the thing, she tweets shes being detained, yada yada without telling people they had expired tags and no insurance right off the bat. Maybe if she wants to not be ridiculed she should put this out there up front.
Maybe she purposely omitted this to play the victim card?
The part about her trying to prove she had insurance from a cell phone browser or whatever it was cracks me up tbh.
someguy
The Army doesn’t have a whole lot of say over what the Marines do w/r/t traffic controls on a Marine base. Seriously. The Army is nefarious like Ali Baba and all and I’m sure they have a whole section of the Army portion of the Pentagon dedicated to making Jane Hamsher’s life a living hell on earth, but the idea that they can control the Marines too – who don’t appear to be controlled by their bosses in the President, Congress, or Department of the Navy, is a bridge too far. As it were.
Jules
Norquist.
Jane played footsie with him.
Until she goes back in a car with no issues I will assume this was all planned as political theater to raise money and to remind us libs that Jane is still out there fighting the good fight.
I DO hope that this light shined in his direction will help Manning get better treatment.
geg6
@Herbal Infusion Bagger:
So you were on the jury that heard the facts and evidence in the Manning case?
Oh, wait. It hasn’t yet come to trial. Always happy to see people convict with no knowledge whatsoever as to the actual facts of the case.
And we won’t even go into the differences between treason/spying and whistle blowing.
Shinobi
Since when does the Marine Corps double as traffic cops?
Conversely, What kind of idiot tries to go to a military base with expired plates?
Both of these questions lead me to believe that everyone involved in this is lying about something.
Bella Q
@mistermix: Voice of reason, heard and appreciated. I can’t add anything to improve your comment.
Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
@Joe Raison:
Yeah, well, I like Angry Black Lady. She once said my user name was funny, and that goes a long way with me. But beyond that, she writes about all kinds of stuff, and I’ve always liked what she wrote. I don’t see how she has a credibility problem. This is a case where you have 2 sides who aren’t at all trustworthy, and I think she’s right to point it out.
I understand why ABL has a thing against Hamsher: racism is still a problem in this country, and Hamsher hasn’t done much to keep it out of her site. I can only speak for myself, but that just makes me mistrust anything else that Hamsher says or does. Maybe it isn’t fair, but that’s the way I react.
So in closing I’ll just say: Angry Black Lady, keep on being angry, being black and being a lady.
morzer
This is a pretty sad and unpleasant post, and it’s not one that is worthy of this site, or of anyone with pretensions to being a liberal. Whatever your beef with Hamsher may be, ABL, she was at least trying to help David House do the right thing for Manning, and to deliver a petition protesting at the conditions in which he is being held. Given the rabid hate-fest that much of America has descended into where Manning is concerned, and the number of crazies out there, this takes some courage and deserves respect, not cheap and nasty snark. If anyone has a credibility problem on this particular issue, it’s you, not Hamsher.
Mattminus
Jane Hamsher is racist against Quantico-Americans!
Breaking! Must credit ABL!
Michael D.
@Herbal Infusion Bagger:
I guess I missed the trial. When did this happen?
martha
@mistermix: THIS. She just looks like a stupid weak woman for not having her car license and insurance up to date. Full stop. I hate it when people (especially women, since I iz one) do dumb shit like this. Unless this was the only card she had to play–and even then, to the wider world, she just looks dumb.
madmommy
@mikefromArlington:
But shouldn’t there be some sort of surveillance video from the gate, or photo documentation? Something other than a spokesman saying what happened? Conversely, if she were so dumb as to attempt to go on base, knowing that there would likely be some sort of snafu, without making absolutely sure that everything was in order, all it does is make her look foolish and draw attention away from the reason she was there in the first place.
Joe Buck
This is not about Jane Hamsher. What’s happening is that they are now cutting off Manning from his last human contact besides his lawyer, by forbidding the only friend he has who’s been authorized to visit him in the past from seeing him.
Hamsher was along to give House a ride and deliver a petition. House has made enormous personal sacrifices and endured tons of harassment to support Manning, who is still on the innocent side of “innocent until proven guilty”.
sixers
ABL doesnt’t want to speculate? Ha! Nice change of pace.
Joe Buck
@madmommy: She’s visited that base before with identical paperwork and not been harassed.
gwangung
In the meantime, she was deflecting focus from Manning to herself. At best, she was incompetent and sloppy.
I’m not at all certain she’s being helpful here. (Again, Activism 101.)
gwangung
@Joe Buck: I don’t think that’s relevant.
Don’t give them an excuse to dick you around; if you do, don’t complain about it.
madmommy
@Joe Buck:
Exactly. So it should be very easy for either party to prove that the other is being less than truthful. Though tags, stickers and insurance do expire, having gotten in before with the same paperwork would not guarantee access this time if any of those documents were expired.
elmo
@Remfin:
First part right, second part wrong, third part right. Prevented from leaving = custodial detention = arrest. All true.
But it doesn’t necessarily trigger the need for Miranda warnings. You can arrest somebody, throw them in jail, charge them with crimes, take them all the way to trial, convict them and throw them in prison for life, without ever delivering a Miranda warning — as long as you don’t ask them any questions.
Heck, you can do all those things and interrogate them, and you still won’t have a problem, as long as you don’t try to use anything they said.
Situation like this, there was no reason to give anyone Miranda warnings, because there was never any intention of interrogating the arrestees.
scot
Morzer….the faux intellects on this site don’t agree with you.
geg6
@gwangung:
QFT.
morzer
@gwangung:
You know, she may have made a mistake with her documentation, but it’s one that plenty of people have made without getting self-righteous and petty blog posts thrown at them by people pursuing a personal vendetta. What ought to count is that, with all her faults, Hamsher was trying to do the right thing and doing so for a man who has been denounced as a traitor by many Americans, in a climate of hatred, when there are numerous armed crazies out there. It takes some real courage to put yourself in the firing line like that, and we ought to be respecting her for it and supporting her, not taking cheap shots over paperwork. There’s a bigger issue here, and if we are good for anything as liberals we ought to be taking that issue into account, rather than letting ourselves get caught up in a bloggers flame war about the nickel and dime stuff.
eemom
@General Stuck:
yeah, I was kind of surprised that hasn’t been mentioned yet.
Whenever it is, I assure you that I will be shutting the fuck up and eating my popcorn.
MikeF
It certainly sounds like harassment, and while I don’t care much for Hamsher I trust her word over some Quantico spokesman’s. The only thing is, she & House say that the purpose of the harassment was to deny Manning his only visitor and/or prevent anyone from seeing his deteriorating condition; I would guess though that it was retaliation for trying to deliver the petition. You can’t make a big deal about the 42,000 signatures you’re about to drop off to embarrass the brig officials and then downplay that as a reason for the MPs fucking with you.
Laura
I think its quite possible the “detainment” was the period of time it took for them to wait for the tow truck to get there. Who gets detained and is allowed to live tweet?
And as for her claims that the “top brass” came and she was told “orders came from the top” my thought is, she told them who they wanted to see, and about the petition so the guard asked a superior.
I feel bad if she was actually harassed and rules were broken, but she’s the girl who cries wolf.
Ryan
@John Cole: Seriously, blogger slapfighting is frelling tedious beyond belief.
eemom
and let’s get one thing straight. I live in this area and the local cops have ZERO tolerance for expired plates and lack of proof of insurance. I realize this is a military base, but hello? One would expect there to be even LESS tolerance there.
As multiple people have said, if she was really trying to do the right thing here rather than get her ass out of the blogosphere and into the big time emmessemm — which imo has been the direct purpose of EVERYTHING she’s done since she landed in DC post-Hollywood — it was just fucking COMMON SENSE to have her fucking shit together.
As it is, yesterday’s stunt has worked out quite well for Jane’s purposes. For Bradley Manning, not so much.
Ash Can
@gwangung:
@geg6:
I’m starting to think we may be the only three people in this thread who ever read Abbie Hoffman’s Steal This Book.
ETA: eemom might be a fourth.
morzer
@eemom:
But it hasn’t served her purposes at all, if self-promotion was what she had in mind, which seems pretty doubtful to me. You don’t promote yourself by having outdated plates/registration or whatever. Nor do you promote yourself by doing things of which the decorous Villagers would not approve.
geg6
@Ash Can:
That would not surprise me in the least. Hell, probably half the people here have never even heard of Abbie Hoffman, let alone read his book.
(Damn, it’s been a long time since I read that one. The more things change, the more they stay the same, huh?)
Odie Hugh Manatee
This really made me laugh at Jane and her antics. While what she is trying to do is worthy in its own right, driving on expired tags and no insurance is pretty stupid. Without looking, I know exactly when my insurance and tags expire on three vehicles we own. While driving a vehicle with expired tags and no insurance is pretty stupid, trying to enter a military base with that vehicle is epic stoopid.
It’s interesting that in all of her twatting about her escapade she kind of ‘forgot’ to mention these little details about her ‘detainment’, instead preferring to make a mountain out of a molehill. If I get pulled over with expired tags and no insurance, is Calamity Jane gonna come to my ‘rescue’? While her heart may be in the right place, her head is up her ass. As usual. Now this story is all about her and not so much about Manning.
Maybe she needed to raise funds to pay for her insurance and tags and staged this whole thing? Probably not but I’m sure that her rabble will be more than happy to pay for them.
El Cid
We would have been much better all around had Hamsher not gotten in the way of all the other bloggers showing up to Quantico’s gate. I’m sure there was a long line of cars waiting to get in.
Allan
@Joe Raison: This is the “don’t you have more important things to worry about” derailing technique. It’s already been dissected here at BJ so no one is impressed with this approach any more. Try finding another derailing technique that isn’t so played out.
Allan
@Joe Buck: Sorry House didn’t pick better allies, then.
soonergrunt
This thread is just fucking awesome!
Allan
@morzer: Unprepared and amateurish help is worse than no help. Had House gone to the base without her “help,” for all we know the visitation would have proceeded normally.
But her heart was in the right place, so she’s a hero.
gwangung
@morzer: You’re trying to teach your grandfather to suck eggs.
Not impressing him, either.
(ETA: I think it would be useful and entirely within the spirit of protest to accept any functional criticism to improve. The whole impulse, at least from my perspective, is if you’re going to act, act competently. Hamsher is not stuck being what I perceive as a screw up…she can learn and grow to be more effective. If she wants to).
@Ash Can: Well, didn’t read it, per se. But doing it….that’s another story.
Not that folks didn’t make mistakes like this, but they learned from that and tried to pass it along. You’d think people would learn something from others’ experiences.
eemom
@morzer:
I must disagree, my dear. You promote yourself by getting your name in the papers and on the teevee set, and you sure as hell promote yourself by painting yourself as a righteous martyr for another martyr.
Nobody’s going to remember the expired plates & shit a week from now, but lots more people are going to recognize Lady Jane’s name after it appeared in the NYT and wherever else, not to mention the insufferable cacophany of “coverage” that will inevitably ensue on the cable shows this week.
El Cid
FWIW, on Greenwald’s page Hamsher’s tweets said that it wasn’t that the car lacked insurance, it’s that she didn’t have the printed insurance card on her.
Last few times I’ve been stopped, no cops ask any more. Recently when I was pulled for another small piffle and got another ‘warning’ (I think the warning was for looking slightly too Hispanic in the wrong area), I even asked the officer if he needed my registration and insurance card.
His response was, “No, we bring it up on the screen automatically.”
I have to remember now to make sure I always have the printed versions handy, because those sorts of stops could easily make me slack about it.
(I didn’t see anything discussing expired or non-proven registration.)
Artnoize
Hamsher 1; ABL 0
Manning; -1
ord_avg_guy
I can attest to the fact that enforcement of driving and vehicles laws and regulations on posts/bases all over the world is ridiculously dickish. These guys write tickets for 3 miles over the speed limit, no full COMPLETE stop behind stop sign, etc, and will tow for anything. All other issues aside, anyone else with expired tags would more than likely have been treated the same way.
jheartney
driving on expired tags and no insurance is pretty stupid.
Supposedly she has insurance, but didn’t have an up-to-date card in the car. I could just about understand that, but driving on expired plates (assuming that part of the story wasn’t USMC smoke-blowing) is unforgivable. Kind of like John Edwards running for president with a pregnant mistress in tow.
Allies like that are worse to have than an implacable enemy.
El Cid
@Allan:
This suggests that House was either unwilling or unable to go himself. Is this correct?
If not, is there evidence he was persuaded by Hamsher to allow her to convey and accompany him?
Or maybe House independently thought it was a good idea and contacted Hamsher. Or some sort of mix of contacts back and forth.
I haven’t followed House’s tweets or blog or whatever, if any such exist. It would be interesting to see if he had expressed answers to these questions.
eemom
@El Cid:
dunno about that, but I’m sort of surprised there wasn’t a wreck on I95 caused by local idiots burning rubber to get to Quantico and rescue the damsel in distress.
morzer
@gwangung:
If you have to make it personal, you’ve conceded the wider argument.
Just sayin’.
eemom
@El Cid:
As noted above, I live in the area where the incident occurred, and I narrowly escaped a $500 ticket last year from a cop who read me the riot act about how you HAVE TO HAVE THE CURRENT INSURANCE CARD IN THE CAR.
ABL’s link above is to the NYT article noting the expired plates. Again, as I said, there is NO tolerance for that shit in these parts.
morzer
@eemom:
If this is such an obvious strategy, the road to Quantico ought to be filled with the heroic bloggers galloping to Manning’s aid, doubtless having ensured that their plates have expired and they have outstanding warrants for any offense they can manage…
And yet…..
Herbal Infusion Bagger
Hamsher had insurance, but electronic proof, not paper proof. Towing her vehicle was just assholery.
Artnoize
Such petty arguments.
Manning has been in SOLITARY for months now.
She is at least DOING something.
Allan
@Herbal Infusion Bagger: Quantico says insurance and tags were expired, not just insurance.
Allan
@Artnoize: Immolating herself at the gate would also constitute “doing something.”
morzer
@Allan:
Derailing the thread again, Allan?
AxelFoley
@Ash Can:
I didn’t read it, but I saw Steal This Movie.
teejay
ABL: You don’t want to speculate but it would be irresponsible not to? Irresponsible not to? Let’s hope nobody on the Right of any consequency is paying any attention to you.
Artnoize
@Allan:
I wouldn’t ask that of anyone.
Is that the only alternative you can imagine?
Manning is being driven to insanity and people are arguing license plates.
Hamsher is at least keeping his condition in the public eye.
Admiral_Komack
@morzer:
Personally, I think it’s all about Jane Hamsher.
But that’s just me.
AxelFoley
@Artnoize:
Hamsher = tossed from a military installation
ABL = chillin’ at home
Manning = alone in the dark
Now who’s winning on the scoreboard again?
morzer
@Artnoize:
Well, let’s be honest here, if it was another blogger who made the mistake about plates while going to Quantico, you’d see most of the people on here jumping on the virtuous bandwagon about how terrible it was for the security state to abuse their powers, and how this innocent person was a hero, and how some petty nonsense about plates wasn’t what mattered. However, because it’s Hamsher, and Balloon-Juice has an ongoing flame war against FDL for a variety of reasons, they immediately turn around and load her with abuse and ignore the fact that it takes real courage to publicly support someone who is the new favorite target for masturbatory pseudo-patriotic hatred. It is hypocritical and dumb, but it isn’t really surprising, in a sad sick sort of way.
Joseph Nobles
Hamsher admitted at FDL that her tags were expired. There’s nothing in the tweets about that. So we definitely have a situation where Jane was spinning this up.
On the other hand, why did it take two hours to turn them around? Even calling a tow truck only took about a hour. But the MPs kept the two there until it was impossible to return and visit Manning. So if you don’t let someone leave or enter the base, it’s kind of hard to call it anything else but detaining them. And it’s also hard to escape the motivation of keeping them away from Manning during the once a week visiting hours.
And worse yet, in the Washington Post article on Manning’s incarceration, the PR officer Valliard responded that Manning wasn’t being treated differently from any other prisoner with his classification, i.e. POI status with occasional flare-ups of suicide watch. But that’s not the question here. We’re asking why Manning is on POI status at all since the Army’s forensic psychologist has been consistently recommending against POI for all but one week in December. And that is, as you’ll note, four months into constant Prevention of Injury status.
So, yes, if Jane played chicken with Manning’s once a week visiting hours to draw attention to her survey or drive traffic to her site, damn her to hell. And if she really is enough of a fuckup to forget about renewing her tags, well, she’s a fuckup. But the bright shiny object shouldn’t distract us from the real crime being committed here: the Marines intentionally driving Bradley Manning insane so that a) he can’t pass the hearing to determine capability to stand trial and thus remain under their tender loving care indefinitely, or b) until he agrees to provide “evidence” against Wikileaks for conspiracy.
If the case for treason is so “open and shut,” as one young budding fascist on Twitter insisted yesterday, then try and convict Manning and begin his actual incarceration. But this punative BS has got to stop.
Artnoize
@AxelFoley:
That was my point Axel.
Hamsher publicized Manning’s inhuman treatment.
She wins my admiration.
She gets hassled for her efforts and ridiculed by people who should be her allies.
[more of blaming the victim]
ABL seems petty [on this issue- I like her on most other topics].
Pongo
@Bob In Pacifica: Have to defend ABL here. Jane Hamsher does have credibility problems, and not just with ABL. She is one of those strident voices on the left who is so enamored with her own position on things she is unable to adapt to new information. For instance, I think she’s completely right to be highlighting the situation with Manning. However, as is so often the case with her, the story is now about Jane Hamsher. We rail bitterly when Sarah Palin does this, but it is no less narcissistic if someone on the left insists on inserting themselves into important stories.
She also is a tad histrionic in her approach. I often agree with her, but can’t read her any more because her close-mindedness and sense of the inherent righteousness of all her positions make her an untrustworthy source of analysis, in my opinion.
Love Tbogg over there, though.
El Cid
@eemom:
I always assumed that. I was just suggesting that living in areas where you never are asked any more, and/or maybe you heard from people you knew that you were never asked for these documents any more, you could get slack.
In fact a couple of times it turned out that I didn’t have a current insurance card in the car, because I forgot that I got the new one. (I’m not the most organized person.)
I do know that having been on and off a buttload of military bases in my life, I remember to have all my ducks in a row because it’s not under regular civilian law and at all times you are a concern of the military.
Pongo
Is it possible that the marines are confusing DMZ with DMV? Why is the US military involved in motor vehicle violations?
The Tragically Flip
I just reviewed the Hamsher/House twitter feeds Greenwald posted, and nowhere do I see an explanation for why House could not visit Manning, independent of Hamsher’s expired tags.
Is he not allowed to walk on base? Is the prison miles away from the guard house? Could he not take a cab? Fine, tow Hamsher’s car, but why not allow Manning his visitor?
And Hamsher used to be allowed to sit in the base McDonald’s during the visit but was told that “privilege” was denied.
There’s also reference to having to provide social security numbers, which is odd and House and Hamsher both reporting that there were “orders” from “high” regarding their visit.
So this notion that this was just some stickler MPs doing their job and stopping an unregistered vehicle is pretty thin gruel. House (and Hamsher) are not unknown quantities and even if some general guideline says “be suspicious of vehicles with registration problems” that wouldn’t apply to people they know and who visit regularly etc.
No, we know that for a fact Manning’s approved visitor was not allowed to visit him on some very specious grounds.
I’m going with “ongoing organized harassment of manning” here rather than “zealous MPs doing their job to the letter” and/or “Hamsher is a bitch and pissed off cops so they threw the book at her” for this.
fidelio
.
That was becoming annoying.
fidelio
Sorry, wrong HTML.
WereBear
@Ash Can: I read it. But I didn’t steal it :)
El Cid
@Joseph Nobles:
I would have fucking rented a car. It’s not that much. Probably less than the fine for expired registration and/or lost work for court time.
I wouldn’t suggest that military gate and other patrol couldn’t fuck with you for basically any reason on base, but that’s just presenting them with cause to fuck with you on a nicely warmed plate.
Thank you, those who read FDL when I do not. Except for TBogg.
fidelio
OK, so the strikethrough thing I’m seeing isn’t from an open HTML command.
hrprogressive
This is a specious hit piece that is full of contempt and hatred and bullshit.
The way Manning has been treated, and tortured, and unlawfully detained…and Jane and David go there and get harassed/detained more or less illegally, and you publish a piece that very obviously implies that they made it up?
If you actually believe anything that comes out of Quantico related to Bradley Manning or their treatment of Jane the other day, it is only because you want to believe it because of your thinly-veiled hatred for FDL and Jane herself.
I have no love lost for Jane Hamsher, she says plenty I disagree with. But this piece is just plain disgusting.
You are by far the worst commentator on this site. I hope your stay is short.
jheartney
And if she really is enough of a fuckup to forget about renewing her tags, well, she’s a fuckup. But the bright shiny object shouldn’t distract us from the real crime being committed here
I’d be with you except for the fact that Hamsher’s being detained is the whole reason we are even talking about this. And she gave them an easy peg for making it her fault she was detained. Worse, it feeds into the “DFH’s too flaky to get their act together” storyline that marginalizes any attempt to bring attention to Manning’s treatment.
You’re right that this is a bright shiny object meant to distract from the more important story. And it was delivered to the Marines as a gift from one Jane Hamshire.
JPL
I just got home so missed the foreplay but Jane omitted information. She might have been detained but I’m glad that she was allowed to tweet her experiences.
@morzer: How many other bloggers would admit their mess-up. Jane should have just admitted that she screwed up. She’s blaming the military for her screw up. What I don’t know is why House didn’t walk to the brig to visit his friend. Do we know that no one else visits Manning?
Allan
Since the name of Abbie Hoffman has been invoked repeatedly in this thread, I’m going to defer to the only person I know who has not only read Abbie’s book, but actually cut his teeth as an organizer working at Abbie’s side, and that’s Al Giordano, who has repeatedly, loudly and emphatically indicated that he refuses to share a foxhole with any of these media whores.
Admiral_Komack
Keep up the good work, Angry Black Lady.
Don
@morzer I’m not sure there’s much disagreement here. Might this have been handled less dramatically if this didn’t have something to do with Manning? Maybe. Did she deserve to be treated any worse than anyone else who might have made this screw-up? No. Was a refusal of electronic proof of insurance more restrictive than typical? We don’t know.
We do know, however, that arguing over all those pissant little point is a distraction. You can be damned sure that when Rosa Parks got on that bus and put herself in a position to be arrested she made sure she hadn’t made choices that would allow her to be arrested for any other charge that didn’t advance the cause
Does screwing up Civil Disobedience 101 make Hamsher a bad person or what was done to her necessarily perfectly right? No.
Does it make her less effective and impede the efforts of others to draw attention to the real cause? Yes.
She’s still out there making an effort most people aren’t but there’s nothing wrong with our wishing she’d by-grod do it RIGHT.
Allan
@morzer: Pointing out the contrast between “doing something” and “doing something smart” with a vivid image is derailing? Interesting, since that’s really the crux of my argument.
El Cid
@The Tragically Flip:
I don’t know what’s where on the base, but MB Quantico’s over 100 square miles. Much of that being training areas, of course.
Checking out the base map, it could easily be a 3 mile walk or more from the main gate to where it looks like the main buildings are. And there might be rules about walking around as a civilian. I dunno.
Yutsano
@JPL:
Because he was with a suspicious person. That makes him, by default, in the eyes of the USMC, a suspicious person. They don’t just detain one passenger from the car and allow the other to wander freely.
El Cid
@Pongo:
I’ve done gate guard duty on a truly, truly minor small base. And you have to do a basic check of tags and ID for anyone coming in, though no one really cared if it was our own service members.
At least as far as our own base serving active duty getting in. You were supposed to notify the relevant superior, who would then contact the one with the registration problems and make them fix it ASAP.
MB Quantico’s a huge base, and they can certainly fuck with anyone under whatever rules they have.
Never heard of checking insurance, though I’m sure it’s on the list of what they require, since anything required under civilian law as far as motor vehicles is required on the base. (Think about how much shit they would constantly be in by police and other state and local law enforcement if they continually let people in with cars with the obvious violations like tags.)
On that statement from “on high”, it wasn’t unusual to get orders from higher up than your regular superior officers, and maybe a member of the gate security detachment might just say something like that in a clumsy manner, when usually you’re ordered to just keep your mouth shut regarding where orders originate and let the relevant officer (i.e., PA) address questions.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@El Cid:
Oregon cops will tow your rig away and give you a ride home if you don’t have your insurance card in your car. One tow bill and a fine for not carrying proof of insurance and you learn to never do that again. A few years ago I had to give a bud a ride to the cop shop so he could show his card, pay a fine and get the release form so the tow shop would release the car to him. I think the fine was $75.00 and the tow was $150.00. The fine would have been a lot more if the insurance start date was AFTER the ticket and tow…lol! Plus he would have had to file proof of insurance directly with the state for a couple of years.
Regardless, driving without that and expired tags was stupid of her.
The Tragically Flip
@El Cid
Here, Jane does address this:
Looks pretty clearly like chicken-shit rules gaming to me. Sure, Hamsher or House might sue and win some kind of symbolic ruling against this sort of thing years later, but too late to do Manning any good.
The car tags are pure red herring and have no relevance on anything except as grist to blame Hamsher for this. They would have been stopped for something else if it wasn’t the tags.
Barry
@Remfin: “Just because the Military doesn’t think of that as “detainment” does not mean it isn’t. ”
Please remember that according to the Pentagon, when somebody is seized and held behind barbed wire, under threat of death, that person is not a ‘prisoner’ (as in ‘torturing prisoners is both wrong and illegal’) but rather a ‘detainee’ (as in ‘multiple detainees sufferered accidental termination after repeated blunt head trauma, drowning, and electro-genital stimulation; the DoD has investigated and found no reason to charge anybody’).
teresa_m
For those folks who don’t think the base has the ability to bar someone from driving on base while having expired tabs, you are patently wrong. This is not just some rule that was implemented for Hamsher, and has been in existence for a long time.
Jane and her compatriot are deliberately lying. I used to teach at the Bangor Trident Nuclear Sub Base, prior to 2001, and even then in order to get on base with my vehicle I had to show proof of insurance, my plates had to be up to date, my drivers license had to be valid, and prior to getting my pass, my car was tested, just like at the DMV before you take your first driving test, they made sure that certain things were working, like brake lights, head lights, turn signals, etc. I also had to prove I was an employee of the University to even apply for my pass each quarter so I could get on base. Hamsher et al, lie so they can turn around accuse the President of being a criminal, just one more time. They know damn well what the rules are to get on a US Military Base. However, their cult followers have no clue and this will play right into their paranoia, the government is out to get us, Obama is Bush III and a War Criminal and a Republican etc and so on. Yeah right. Sigh. Detained… I think not.
I know you didn’t ask, but you are welcome.
The Tragically Flip
@teresa_m:
Would you care to address the bit I quoted, where House was denied being allowed to walk or take a cab to the facility, which he had been allowed to do in past?
eemom
@morzer:
nope and nope and nope.
That is not true, at least for me. If I found out they were dumb enough to venture on a military base with expired plates and no proof of insurance, I’d say, exactly as has been said numerous times above, that they were ASKING for trouble; and that if they were really serious about their mission, they wouldn’t have let it get fucked up and derailed by stupid shit like that.
The “because it’s Hamsher” is an issue because she has REPEATEDLY proven herself to be a bullying, hypocritical, intellectually dishonest narcissist for whom self-promotion is the sine qua non of every action.
I also don’t think it’s fair to say that BJ has “an ongoing flame war” against FDL when the owner of this blog has exerted every effort to put it out.
There are, OTOH, a lot of us here who have been observing the woman throughout her illustrious political “career” which began in 2005, and we know whereof we speak. And plenty of us — yes, even including me — started out respecting her, and were nastily disillusioned by nothing but her very own self.
gwangung
Padawan, it would help if you had more experience in the world, and the nuts and bolts of social activism.
Run along. Get that experience.
El Cid
@The Tragically Flip:
As I said, I don’t tend to read FDL. I’m not saying I was doubting the various parts of this detention as entirely political (or whatever you want to call it) in purpose.
I think the car question is one discussion (which again doesn’t surprise me for civilian base entrance, but then again I don’t know about Quantico’s habits, but I’d expect it to be pretty harsh). Maybe it’s completely typical, maybe as Hamsher suggests it hasn’t been a problem before. (Again, I don’t know why you’d risk it instead of having all your ducks in a row.)
The detention or blocking of House in general sounds very much about denying access.
JGabriel
ABL:
Well, in this instance, Jane documented the incident in real time via twitter. I think the amount of time Hamsher and House were held up from seeing Manning pretty definitely falls within the definition of detained, whatever else you think of Hamsher’s credibility.
.
kth
Not a Hamsher fan (read FDL a bit during the Lieberman/Lamont days, turned off by the rancidity of Jane’s blasts (“sandpaper snatch” being a fairly typical epithet of hers)), but she’s on the side of the angels here.
gwangung
Well, yeah, but that’s why a lot of people are irritated with her. It’d help a lot more if she had gotten her shit together; it’s a lot more effective and impressive if you’re getting persecuted if you’ve crossed the ts and dotted the is. I think a lot of folks here can testify to that from personal experience….
Admiral_Komack
@teresa_m:
Thank you.
ornery curmudgeon
Maybe it’s something personal? I’m beginning to think Angry Black Lady is either short-sighted or has an axe to grind.
Hey ABL … there is no shortage of actual, nasty villains in our nation.
Mike
Jane Hamsher is taking direct action. What are you doing besides attacking her from the sidelines?
Davebo
Angry Black Lady
i haven’t read all the comments, so i’m directing this to the crowd ::waves hands around::
credibility refers to truthfulness. [email protected]Bob In Pacifica might be able to accuse me of lack of objectivity, but i don’t lie; or, at least, i have not yet been proven to have lied. jane has.
that’s it.
it may seem petty to you, but i think that when one has a following and one is providing one’s following information, one should provide truthful information. the link i provided evidences that she did not do that on one occasion.
that is the very definition of a credibility problem.
if you want to say i have an objectivity problem, i’ll cop to that.
but petty? i don’t see the discussion i started last week as being petty. telling that you do.
anyone want to call me semperfobic since i’m not inclined to believe quantico’s report to the NYT either?
pardon me for wanting to know more facts before making my judgment.
jesus fuck. you people.
Allan
@Angry Black Lady: Hey there! Has John or anyone taught you any kung Google moves to make the strikethrough glitch go away? For at least some of us, the thread is jacked up htmlwise.
rikyrah
I don’t believe a word she says.
Peter
On the one side, a woman overly enamoured with her own victimhood and with a long history of making shit up. On the other side, the USMC, who are also invested in their side being taken as fact.
Neither player in this can be taken at their word. Consequently, we don’t actually know a goddamned thing about what happened! Except for the one thing that both sides agree on, that Jane was driving onto a military base with expired tags, which makes her an idiot.
geg6
@Peter:
Well, yes. This is the perfect distillation of my feelings on the matter. Bravo!
The Tragically Flip
@Peter:
What about House? Is his credibility worth nothing?
Angry Black Lady
@Allan: i don’t see what you’re talking about.
Peter
@The Tragically Flip: Don’t know anything about him.
Peter
Also, what the hell is with all the commentors acting like ABL accused Hamsher of being the fucking devil and definitely the wrongful actor in this scenario? All she said is that neither side (not Hamsher, and not the USMC) has any credibility, and neither of them can be trusted to tell it straight.
The Tragically Flip
So then doesn’t he deserve a presumption of honesty? Why would he lie about this?
Angry Black Lady
@Peter: i’m petty and i don’t like jane and house nigger, that’s why.
assholes.
Andy K
@The Tragically Flip:
Problem with this account from Hamsher being that her original tweet-spin was so evasive of the truth that it’s hard to believe her later spin.
Face it: Hamsher has major credibility problems, so major that any involvement she has with Manning is bad for him.
Angry Black Lady
@ornery curmudgeon: there’s also no shortage of assholes.
de stijl
@teejay:
From the lexicon:
“Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.” – In 2000, WSJ pundit and sometimes paid Republican operative Peggy Noonan introduced a potentially explosive, unverifiable rumor that Bill Clinton was being blackmailed by Fidel Castro into the mainstream media, using the phrase “Is it irresponsible to speculate?… It would be irresponsible not to.” The blatant dishonesty of this ratfucking attempt immediately turned it into an Internet meme signifying a personal attack, usually wildly untrue, launched under a cloak of sanctimony: “Does Candidate Trollypants bite the heads off live, underaged, rabid bats? It would be irresponsible not to speculate!” See also, Keep on walking and Nooners.
Allan
@Angry Black Lady: It may be a browser-specific thing, but sometimes the
strikethroughgets switched on, and from there to the end of the page all text is lined out, and the comment numbering resets to one at that point as well. Anyhoo, makes it a bit hard to read the blogwar…The Tragically Flip
@Andy K:
So don’t. Believe Mr. House for whom we have no reason to believe he would lie, nor allow Hamsher to lie about things he was involved with.
Also the Marines have a PR guy who could deny all this if it was way out of whack.
What do the “Hamsher cannot be trusted” crowd believe would explain this event? Fact: Manning’s 1 weekly visitor was denied from visiting him.
What adequately explains this? Hamsher’s fucking car? Is that really reasonable grounds to not allow House to proceed on foot or by cab to the brig?
There’s an underpants gnomes thing happening here:
1) Hamsher is untrustworthy
2) ???
3) The Marines were completely justified in blocking the visit.
Mart
What Manning and wikileaks exposed is nothing different from what the Arab world sees and hears daily on Al Jareeza. Our military is capable of evil and kills/injures thousands of civilians.
Whether or not Hamsher is a rotten no good liar, at least she is on the right side on this issue. If the USMC was torturing Manning while Bush was President most all you all would be outraged. Seems like now that Obama is President many of you spend a lot of time blaming messengers when you do not like what you hear. I liked it better when lefties cheered whistleblowers, not condemned them. I also liked it better when lefties wanted the Iraq war de-funded and our troops brought home. Seems so long ago, what changed?
FlipYrWhig
@JGabriel:
Well, there’s “detained” like when you’re late to something and you say that you were “unavoidably detained,” and then there’s “detained” like you’re being held in some kind of custody.
Andy K
@Mike:
Is that so? By drumming up a 40K sigs on a petition by, along with her PAC partner Greenwald, writing some blog posts that, frankly, seem to tell only half the story (Hey, Jane and Glenn, when are you going to ask who it was that requested Manning’s 706 board, an action that would justify Manning’s near isolation?)? That seems like indirect action to me.
Judging by her original, less-than-honest tweets there’s a poutrage-fueled fundraiser coming up; judging by Hamsher/Greenwald’s past actions, 1/3 of the cash raised going to to some Free Manning fund, the other 2/3 going for administrative costs.
FlipYrWhig
@The Tragically Flip:
Um, yes? Like if you’re in line at the liquor store and you have ID but your friend doesn’t, they might not sell to you either. If you’re with a friend and your friend is acting suspicious, is it that inconceivable that you’d be treated as suspicious too?
Peter
@The Tragically Flip:
Impossible to tell one way or another without a good deal more information than is provided to us! For example, we don’t know if that’s standard practice for people showing up in illegal vehicles. We don’t know how Jane and House behaved, which would have had a big impact on what leeway they would have been given.
And even beyond that, there is a lot of open ground in between ‘House should have been allowed in’ and ‘he was turned back specifically so that Manning wouldn’t get his visit’. The one does not necessarily indicate the other, as you are implying.
Bottom line is, we just do not know. Getting sanctimonious at people pointing that out just makes you silly.
Remfin
@elmo: You are, of course, right elmo. I kind of overstated/misstated Miranda’s requirements.
My main point was to get across that this is something the Supreme Court clearly defines as detainment, in Miranda cases specifically but also a number of others. If she was actually not allowed to leave there isn’t even a question here, it’s open and shut.
lawguy
@mikefromArlington: Yes, well. You do understand the difference between taking Hampsher’s car and denying the other guy access to Manning don’t you? You do understand that Hampsher never visited Manning, but only dropped off the other guy and waited for him, right?
Whatever the problem with the registration with the car that only accures to the owner and driver not the passenger, right?
Andy K
@The Tragically Flip:
Let’s see….Hamsher contacted Quantico, letting them knowing she was coming with the petition. Was she asked further questions, like, ya know, what’s your address, DL#, etc.?
When she gets to Quantico, is she driving a car with expired DC (where she lives now) tags, or are they expired Oregon (her former legal residence) tags? Is her DL from DC, Oregon, Connecticut- where she lived for a while in ’06, putting Lieberman in blackface- or California?
The expired tags alone raise red flags in the eyes of the MPs working at a high security facility. Now if the plates and the other info don’t match up, how do the MPs know who they’re dealing with? At this point, Hamsher is is a very dubious character.
And just because House, who has been there to visit in the past, is with Hamsher, do you think this would clear her in the eyes of the MPs? Hell no! It just makes them suspicious of House. Doesn’t matter how many times he’s been on the base w/out problems in the past- he may have been plotting something all along, no? So they hold him, too, until they get Hamsher’s shit all straightened out.
soonergrunt
Careful now. You’re using that ‘logical thought process’ trick again. You’re going to hurt someone with that shit.
lawguy
@martha: Do you know for a faact thatthis is true?
Andy K
And I’ve got it from a reliable source that Hamsher was, in fact, driving a car with expired Oregon tags.
elmertfudd
@mistermix: FWIW, when I’ve had to go on military bases for work, the guards did check to make sure all registrations and safety checks were up to date before allowing me to proceed.
The Tragically Flip
@Andy K:
Quantico isn’t a “high security” facility, it’s a fucking training base. It isn’t Fort Knox or a missile silo.
Second, the expired tags justifies a little extra scrutiny, but after you’ve double checked Hamsher and House’s IDs and searched the car, what risk are you protecting the base from by denying them? Sure, tow the damn car, but at that point you’ve established who House is, why he is there and there is no rational reason to expect any harm to result from his being allowed to continue.
Expired tags isn’t a felony (even in Virginia) and isn’t a carte blanche to assume they’re going to try and spring Manning or assassinate the Commandant of the Marine Corps. You can call it “suspicious behavior” but that label makes me shudder at the rank authoritarianism inherent to it, based on the egregious assumption that someone who would break one law would break any law.
No, this wasn’t zealous MPs, they said they had orders from above, they held them just long enough to ensure House couldn’t get to the the Brig before the end of visitor hours and they used the most banal pretext to do it.
Admiral_Komack
@Davebo:
“Your papers, please?”
“I only have a pipe, man.”
“Then you’d better come with me!”
agrippa
Tempest, meet teapot
Laura
@Mike:
“Jane Hamsher is taking direct action. What are you doing besides attacking her from the sidelines?”
And she is a fool. Anyone who knows how to properly execute a direct action knows to avoid any and all possibility of arrest or detention until AFTER the action is completed.
Driving on a military base with no proof of insurance and expired tags to deliver a package she was told she could NOT deliver is reckless.
DennisCA
What a surprise, another Hamsher hate hard-on from Angry Black Lady. Bonus points for calling her a racist again. Stay classy balloonbaggers.
Herbal Infusion Bagger
“Always happy to see people convict with no knowledge whatsoever as to the actual facts of the case.”
You’ve read the Wired transcript of Manning bragging to Lamo about what he did, right? So how are you entertaining the notion it was somebody other than Manning?
Herbal Infusion Bagger
“And we won’t even go into the differences between treason/spying and whistle blowing.”
All quarter-of-a-million cables were whistle-blowing?
What egregious crime exactly was worth shafting the credibility of every single friggin’ State Department diplomat?
If he’d stuck to the helicopter videos, he’d be a whistleblower.
But the State Dept cables, nope, that was pure egotistic vandalism. ‘Cos now, no country is gonna tell our diplomats shit about what they’re really thinking behind the scenes. Which means our diplomacy is weakened, because we won’t know the motivations of the key players.
Remember this the next time some Bad Thing In The World is happening and you call for the US to try More Diplomacy. Manning made that more difficult, folks.
Jeff Fecke
@Peter:
Exactly.
Mart
@Herbal Infusion Bagger:
Wikileaks sent the 250,000 cables to four newspapers. One of the papers sent the 250K to the NYT. The papers vetted and released the majority of the 2,000 or so cables out there; not wiki.
So when are you calling for the four newspaper plus NYT editors to be placed in isolation at a military brig for months with no charges? When do you start calling for the assassination of these editors?
When the only whistleblowers that don’t get punished by their employer and who do get covered in the media are from Cheney’s office or the senior military command; maybe it is time for a new model.
Also too, blame the messenger. It is certainly wikileaks fault the state dept is not credible, not their own words.
Mrs. Polly
@JGabriel: Unfortunately, Jane only documented part of the incident. She left out the embarrassing–and damning–detail of her expired license plates, which once again shows that she is an untrustworthy source.
The last thing Manning needs is people who are supposedly his supporters showing themselves to be foolhardy, deceitful, ditzes. Hamsher’s an embarrassment, from the way she fleeces her followers, to her grandstanding on very shaky ground.
Her acolytes’ ability to dismiss all upsetting facts about her—the financial shenanigans with her PAC, her hypocrisy regarding going on FOX, accepting money from BP, her naïveté about making common cause with Teabaggers, her embrace of Grover Norquist–is disturbing.
This is not to excuse Mannings’ treatment in any way. But Hamsher is not calling attention to his mistreatment; she is only making him look bad while she tries to make herself look saintly. Again.
Just Some Fuckhead
@The Tragically Flip:
Busted tail light. Those things have a tendency to break at the most inopportune times.
Herbal Infusion Bagger
“Wikileaks sent the 250,000 cables to four newspapers.”
Where above did I talk about Wikileaks?
Uncle Clarence Thomas
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I do so enjoy a balloonbagger anti-FDL, pro-military fascist circle jerk.
But if Jane Hamsher had sat around all day on her ass watching football, talking about football, putting out football team paraphernalia, and getting her rival blog slambook up to date, rather than driving David House to Quantico to visit Bradley Manning (the balloonbagger antithesis) – as she has done many times before without the benefit of your uninformed shithouse ratfucking or gas money – then this hysterical blog post would never have occurred. So I sincerely thank you haters for this schaden-Freudian funfest.
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Mart
@Herbal Infusion Bagger: You didn’t. My point was the chain is Manning (allegedly) gave to Wikileaks, wiki gave to the newspapers, and the newspapers made public. Of those three, only Manninng and Wikileaks has been condemned; but it was the newspapers that first made, and have since mostly made public. So do you want the newspapers editors in jail for their horrible conduct? (Which last I read the state dept said was not a big deal.)
Malron
Oh.
Fuck.
Me.
Blackface Jane (yes, and she apologized to anyone who was seriously offended)drives to Quantico in a car with expired plates, gets it towed like thousands of others do on a daily basis because she doesn’t have proof of insurance, and this is supposed to be some major conspiracy by the Marines?
I’m sorry but that’s just too funny.
Malron
@eemom: As it is, yesterday’s stunt has worked out quite well for Jane’s purposes. For Bradley Manning, not so much.
Paula
You know, it’s not a point of pride to try and perform the duties of a “seasoned” political activist and then get derailed by expired plates and insurance.
Fuck me, unless someone here can prove that the military fabricated Hamsher’s expired plates, this is an embarrassment and a testament to the internet Left’s dumbassery. It’s not just about Jane, but the fact that some people apparently think it’s enough that *someone* did *something* for Bradley Manning without judging how minimally competent the attempt is. Yes, I’m sure Manning is greatly comforted by the fact that Hamsher tried, thereby demonstrating the purity of her progressive soul, but you know, expired plates are too much of an institutional hurdle to overcome.
Yeah, the military’s gonna make it tough on House to get in anyway. Why the fuck would you not make sure all your shit was in order so that they would have a tough time making shit up and turning you away?
FuzzyWuzzy
Thank God the Hamsher haters will never rise up from their lazy boy recliners and couches to take on the man. Heaven forfend that they expose themselves to the ridicule of people who are too cool to care. Hipster Nihilism is the neverending pose of my generation and all generations to follow.
Karen
I know I’m way late here but all I have to say is, if you’ve got drugs in the car, you don’t speed. Not that I’m saying Jane Hamsher has drugs but if you’re going to Quantico, you don’t give them excuses by having expired insurance and tags. I’d think she’d be smart enough to know that.
She also has to stop crying wolf all the time. Tell the truth. Either she was detained or just forbidden to go on to the base. Two separate things. It doesn’t mean she has no case. But the idea is to get more bees with honey, not vinegar.
Karen
@Mrs. Polly:
I never did understand how they could bitch about Obama being as bad as Bush yet excuse Jane whoring herself out to Grover Nordquist.
But apparently it’s not the whoring out that matters. It’s who’s the whore.
soonergrunt
Well, there are some subjects about which the left is dumber than the right. This is one. And while the conditions of Manning’s detention are, I think (knowing that I don’t know details and I don’t know the brig’s issues) a little extreme, it doesn’t rise to torture.
What bothers me more than anything is the extent to which people lose their collective shit and abandon any capability for rational thought.
It seems that batshit crazy and stupid are not the exclusive preserve of birthers.
And I’ll second what teresa says and I’ll extend it to the fact that there are no nukes on Quantico (that we know of) but there are other things that need protecting and securing. Infantry weapons are relatively cheap and don’t need any specialized knowledge to kill a lot of people. That’s kind of the whole point of them, and there are tens of thousands of those things on Quantico. Radios–even the tactical radios are classified Top Secret inside the casing. They cost anywhere from $2,000 to $20,000 depending on the model. Night Vision Devices are not cheap. At $3,500 to $22,000 each, they’re sensitive, unclassified pilfer-ables.
If you come on the base and act remotely screwy, you’re going to have problems, because the security forces directive is to ensure the safety and security of Government personnel, dependents, and property, and that takes precedence of whatever you think matters.
I find it very interesting that two functional human beings, one of whom has been on the base several times, used a car that was absolutely guaranteed to draw the attention of the security force, and did so, arriving with less than an hour available for their claimed intent to visit Manning. Really? This guy House is building himself up as the only guy with any balls to stand up to the US Marines, who he and Hamsher are claiming are bullying all of Manning’s visitors to stay away, and he can’t be bothered to be there when visiting hours start to spend as much time as possible with his friend, who is supposedly on the very edge of insanity because he’s so lonely?
REALLY?
When one considers that Hamsher is well known for her casual relationship with facts, and the fact that Manning’s buddy has said things that were directly contradicted by Manning’s lawyer on more than one occasion, I have to wonder exactly who was acting with malice and intent.
It looks like I’m going to need a new blog home, because matoko_chan, with her tenuous link to reality is apparently the new standard for critical thought at BJ.
Well, at least crazy people blogging are fun to watch, so I’ll have that anyway.