Webster Smith is 0 for 2.
http://www.amazon.com/CONDUCT-UNBECOMING-Officer-Lady-Conviction/dp/1460978021
Ms Carmen Walker would rather be consistent than be correct. She has been consistently wrong in the Webster Smith case. Moreover she is shamefully arrogant in her ignorance. If ignorance could fly, her office would be an airport. And if knowledge, judgment, insight, discernment or even common sense and fair play were dynamite, her entire staff would not be able to scrape together enough to blow her nose.
The gap between common sense and legal reasoning are so far apart in her decision as to be farcical. In the pantheon of agency legal opinions this decision is akin to a pig in a tutu, wearing a tiara and a red ruby in her nose trying to compete in the Miss Universe Contest. This is both comical and pathetic. Ms Walker has no fear of gazing into the abyss of ignorance.
It seems as if Ms Walker having come out this way, and gone down this road, finds it impossible to go back. She cannot find it in her soul to get back on the right track. She is determined to live on the wrong side of history like a cow watching a train pass by. Whoever coined the phrase “stuck on stupid” had a premonition.
It appears that Webster Smith has exhausted his administrative remedies. His only recourse is to request an EEOC hearing within 30 days of Ms Walker’s 26 October letter; and he can file an appeal in the Federal District Court within 90 days of the EEOC’s final decision.
(Feb 24, 2009)Independent Audit Finds USCG Office of Civil Rights Incompetent.
Employees in the Coast Guard’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) do not have the skills or up-to-date training to handle many of the service’s cases and formal discrimination complaints are not adequately handled, according to an independent report presented to the Coast Guard on February 5.
Terri Dickerson, the office’s director, requested an independent review April 25, 2008, less than one month after an investigation by the Coast Guard Investigative Service, Naval Criminal Investigative Service and the FBI failed to determine who left nooses for a Black Coast Guard Academy cadet and an officer conducting race-relations training in the summer of 2007.
At the same time, an unofficial Coast Guard blog was posting regularly about the office and the director’s alleged inefficiencies, reducing morale among employees and casting OCR in a negative light, according to the report.
The findings are “deeply disturbing and completely unacceptable,” Cummings, D-Md., wrote in a letter to Commandant ADM Thad Allen. Cummings, the chairman of the House subcommittee on the Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation, said he plans to call a hearing in April to further discuss the report.
“The findings of this report demand decisive and comprehensive action to correct what appear to be a number of significant shortfalls in the administration,” he wrote.
The Coast Guard retained Booz Allen Hamilton, a consulting firm with offices throughout the country, to review the entire civil rights program in September 2008, according to a letter from Dickerson to the Department of Homeland Security’s Equal Employment Opportunity Programs.
Coast Guard spokesman Cmdr. Ron LaBrec said the service is thankful for the feedback and is conducting a thorough review of the report and its recommendations.
“The [DHS] Office of Civil Rights and Liberties periodically conducts assessments on its civil rights components and the [OCR] director wanted to do this report now with the ongoing modernization initiative to look across the board and improve the practices in the office and address any allegations that were coming out of blogs or even internal discussions. We take allegations of mistreating [privacy issues] seriously,” LaBrec said.
According to the report, the Coast Guardsmen assigned to ORC often come in with little civil rights experience and serve two-year tours, and “often they leave their post just as they are becoming oriented to the position.” The other Coast Guardsmen in the office are on collateral duty, with the same limited backgrounds, according to the report.
Although training is available, the report said, many employees have not completed the legislatively mandated initial or refresher training. In some instances training was behind up to five years.
“Some staff members lack the requisite skills, abilities, and training to effectively perform the duties of their positions, thereby diminishing effectiveness of the divisions/teams,” according to the report.
LaBrec said the “decentralized” structure led to the delinquency in training and the Coast Guard is looking to “standardize” and “improve” its training program. There are 22 full-time positions within OCR, five of which are military, but that likely is not enough to sufficiently handle the additional responsibilities related to the increased caseload, according to the report.
Although Booz Allen acknowledges that some of the recommendations listed in the report cannot be accomplished with the office’s $788,459 budget, OCR’s Web site says the recommendations are under review and lists some that have either already been completed or can be accomplished in the near future.
Those include:
• Restructuring the office to “optimize the use of our military personnel” and take advantage of existing training and resources.
• Analyze the workload to ensure statutory and non-statutory obligations are being met.
LaBrec said it is too early to determine what recommendations would require additional funding or how much additional money would be needed to accomplish those goals.
“The review reaffirmed many positive aspects of the Coast Guard civil rights program. The report also makes clear there is work ahead,” Dickerson wrote in Thursday’s Alcoast. “Foremost, consistent with past similar studies, the BAH team found we must restructure the [equal employment opportunity] function, and secondarily, shore up our equal employment opportunity/equal opportunity product lines so that they more optimally support our civil rights service providers and work force.”
LaBrec also said the 58 formal civil rights complains OCR received in fiscal year 2007, roughly one per 1,000 people, shows the office is doing some things right, since several of the other DHS departments have a much higher number of civil rights complaints per capita.
Allen told Coast Guard Academy cadets and faculty in October 2007 that racial bigotry will not be accepted and goes against the service’s ethos and humanitarian mission. In August 2008, he released a service-wide message outlining plans to improve diversity throughout the service.
As part of the new initiative, every flag officer and senior executive service member is required to attend one diversity conference a year and they are expected to build relationships with minority-based “institutions of higher education.”
The first noose, which garnered national attention, was left in the bag of a Black cadet in July 2007 onboard the Coast Guard cutter Eagle. The second was found in August on the office floor of a white female officer who had been conducting race relations training.
Not only Carmen Walker, but others in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have gone out of their way to protect the Coast Guard. Judging from what happen to Tony D'Armiento, a civilian employee of the U.S. Coast Guard, I would not advise Webster Smith to try to go into DHS Headquarters for a sit down face-to-face with Ms Walker. The hired help sound like they were recruited from Blackwater Security rejects. Blackwater is alleged to have wasted 17 Iraqi civilians on the streets without as much as a car back fire to justify the shoot-out at the Baghdad Corral. Consider the case of Tony D'Armiento as reported in the Washington Post Sunday, 16 December 2007.
A civilian U.S. Coast Guard employee was placed on paid administrative leave, threatened with a criminal investigation and confronted by guards at gunpoint in retaliation for disclosing information embarrassing to the service's troubled fleet replacement program, his attorney said.
Anthony D'Armiento, a former Northrop Grumman systems engineer working for the Coast Guard's acquisitions department, asked the Bush administration to appoint an independent inspector general to investigate his allegations against staff members of Richard L. Skinner, inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security. D'Armiento's attorney called their actions "an egregious act of intimidation and excessive force" against a government whistle-blower.
D'Armiento was placed on leave Oct. 1 and told to cooperate with Coast Guard investigators or face criminal prosecution, said Debra S. Katz, his attorney, in a letter to Skinner and the White House.
D'Armiento cooperated, but after he was told he could retrieve his office and home computers from Skinner's offices in Rosslyn on Oct. 29, Paul Weare, an investigator for the DHS inspector general, attempted to question D'Armiento. When D'Armiento refused to answer, three guards appeared, one pointed a gun at his chest, denied him his equipment and threatened him with arrest if he returned, Katz said.
"Mr. Weare was trying to lure Mr. D'Armiento to the OIG office where he could be further interrogated without his attorney present," Katz said in the letters, copies of which were obtained by The Washington Post. "This staged armed confrontation was an extreme and transparent act of retaliation against Mr. D'Armiento."
Skinner's office did not respond to repeated requests for a comment. A DHS official confirmed that D'Armiento is under investigation.
The Coast Guard said in a statement that "unauthorized disclosure or improper handling of sensitive, classified or proprietary information is strictly prohibited and may result in administrative or criminal charges."
Katz wrote that when D'Armiento declined to speak with Weare in an interrogation room and said, "I want my computer back now," Weare told him to "back off" and "get out of [his] face." After a guard drew his handgun, prompting D'Armiento to say he would call the police, a guard replied, "We are the police," Katz wrote.
Katz said that, on Sept. 25, D'Armiento turned over to a fellow whistle-blower Coast Guard documents marked sensitive but unclassified, and that the papers showed that the agency was aware of hundreds of defects in communications equipment aboard its new, $640 million flagship vessel, known as the National Security Cutter. The ship is part of the Coast Guard's $25 billion fleet replacement program, known as Deepwater.
In the documents, dated August and September and reported by Wired magazine's Web site, Coast Guard officials noted the probability that the first of eight planned cutters "will be unable to process classified information." Nevertheless, the Coast Guard appeared prepared to accept responsibility for correcting some defects at added taxpayer expense after delivery, even though that was the contractors' obligation, D'Armiento alleged.
Coast Guard officials called the criticism premature. They said the authorities were aware of the reported defects. "We're not going to accept [delivery of] a cutter with any kind of major problems," Coast Guard spokeswoman Laura Williams said.
The vessels are being built by Northrop Grumman with electronics provided by Lockheed Martin. The first cutter, the Bertholf, whose price tag has doubled since 2002 and whose delivery was delayed from August to April, is undergoing trials at sea. The second and third of eight planned ships are under contract, estimated to cost $500 million each.
The Coast Guard is also addressing design flaws that could lead to fatigue cracks well before the end of the first cutter's 30-year life span.
The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet,
8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used? Because that's the way they built them in England, and English expatriates built the US railroads.
Why did the English build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used.
Why did "they" use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.
Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England , because that's the spacing of the wheel ruts.
So who built those old rutted roads? Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (and England) for their legions. The roads have been used ever since.
And the ruts in the roads? Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.
Therefore the United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is
derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot.
Bureaucracies live forever.
So the next time you a re handed a Specification/ Procedure/ Process and
wonder "What horse's ass came up with it?" you may be exactly right.
Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the
rear ends of two war horses. (Two horses' asses.)
Now, an added twist to the story:
When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big
booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid
rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory in
Utah . The engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred to make them
a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to
the launch site. The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a
tunnel in the mountains, and the SRBs had to fit through that tunnel.The
tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as
you now know, is about as wide as two horses' behinds.
So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse's ass. And you thought being a horse's ass
wasn't such a big deal?
Ancient horse's asses control almost everything....and CURRENT Horses Asses
are controlling everything else!!
The U.S. Coast Guard Court of Criminal Appeals has scheduled oral arguments in the Case of The Appeal of the Court-martial Conviction of Cadet Webster Smith for January 16, 2008 in Arlington, Virginia.A legal brief filed by his lawyers claims the convictions should be thrown out because the defense team was not allowed to fully cross-examine one of his accusers during Smith's court martial. They say that meant the jury didn't hear testimony that the accuser, a female cadet, Shelly Roddenbush, had once had consensual sex with a Coast Guard enlisted man and then called it sexual assault.
Lt. Cmdr. Patrick M. Flynn, the government's lawyer for the appeal, said 27 November that the jury "heard enough" and the trial judge was within his rights to impose reasonable limits on the cross-examination.
"They didn't need to hear the additional details the defense is arguing they should have been allowed to hear."
The defense also is asking the court to set aside Smith's convictions on two lesser charges of failing to obey an order and abandoning watch.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces
450 E Street, Northwest
Washington, D.C. 20442-0001
SCHEDULED HEARINGS
United States v. Webster M. Smith, No. 08-0719/CG
(Appellee) (Appellant)
Counsel for Appellant: Ronald C. Machen, Esq.
Counsel for Appellee: LT Emily P. Reuter, USCG
Case Summary: GCM conviction of going from place of duty, attempting to disobey an order, sodomy, extortion, and indecent assault. Granted issue questions whether the military judge violated Appellant’s constitutional right to confront his accusers by limiting his cross-examination of [SR], the government’s only witness, on three of the five charges.
NOTE: Counsel for each side will be allotted 20 minutes to present oral argument in this case.
Ms Carmen Walker would rather be consistent than be correct. She has been consistently wrong in the Webster Smith case. Moreover she is shamefully arrogant in her ignorance. If ignorance could fly, her office would be an airport. And if knowledge, judgment, insight, discernment or even common sense and fair play were dynamite, her entire staff would not be able to scrape together enough to blow her nose.
The gap between common sense and legal reasoning are so far apart in her decision as to be farcical. In the pantheon of agency legal opinions this decision is akin to a pig in a tutu, wearing a tiara and a red ruby in her nose trying to compete in the Miss Universe Contest. This is both comical and pathetic. Ms Walker has no fear of gazing into the abyss of ignorance.
It seems as if Ms Walker having come out this way, and gone down this road, finds it impossible to go back. She cannot find it in her soul to get back on the right track. She is determined to live on the wrong side of history like a cow watching a train pass by. Whoever coined the phrase “stuck on stupid” had a premonition.
It appears that Webster Smith has exhausted his administrative remedies. His only recourse is to request an EEOC hearing within 30 days of Ms Walker’s 26 October letter; and he can file an appeal in the Federal District Court within 90 days of the EEOC’s final decision.
(Feb 24, 2009)Independent Audit Finds USCG Office of Civil Rights Incompetent.
Employees in the Coast Guard’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) do not have the skills or up-to-date training to handle many of the service’s cases and formal discrimination complaints are not adequately handled, according to an independent report presented to the Coast Guard on February 5.
Terri Dickerson, the office’s director, requested an independent review April 25, 2008, less than one month after an investigation by the Coast Guard Investigative Service, Naval Criminal Investigative Service and the FBI failed to determine who left nooses for a Black Coast Guard Academy cadet and an officer conducting race-relations training in the summer of 2007.
At the same time, an unofficial Coast Guard blog was posting regularly about the office and the director’s alleged inefficiencies, reducing morale among employees and casting OCR in a negative light, according to the report.
The findings are “deeply disturbing and completely unacceptable,” Cummings, D-Md., wrote in a letter to Commandant ADM Thad Allen. Cummings, the chairman of the House subcommittee on the Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation, said he plans to call a hearing in April to further discuss the report.
“The findings of this report demand decisive and comprehensive action to correct what appear to be a number of significant shortfalls in the administration,” he wrote.
The Coast Guard retained Booz Allen Hamilton, a consulting firm with offices throughout the country, to review the entire civil rights program in September 2008, according to a letter from Dickerson to the Department of Homeland Security’s Equal Employment Opportunity Programs.
Coast Guard spokesman Cmdr. Ron LaBrec said the service is thankful for the feedback and is conducting a thorough review of the report and its recommendations.
“The [DHS] Office of Civil Rights and Liberties periodically conducts assessments on its civil rights components and the [OCR] director wanted to do this report now with the ongoing modernization initiative to look across the board and improve the practices in the office and address any allegations that were coming out of blogs or even internal discussions. We take allegations of mistreating [privacy issues] seriously,” LaBrec said.
According to the report, the Coast Guardsmen assigned to ORC often come in with little civil rights experience and serve two-year tours, and “often they leave their post just as they are becoming oriented to the position.” The other Coast Guardsmen in the office are on collateral duty, with the same limited backgrounds, according to the report.
Although training is available, the report said, many employees have not completed the legislatively mandated initial or refresher training. In some instances training was behind up to five years.
“Some staff members lack the requisite skills, abilities, and training to effectively perform the duties of their positions, thereby diminishing effectiveness of the divisions/teams,” according to the report.
LaBrec said the “decentralized” structure led to the delinquency in training and the Coast Guard is looking to “standardize” and “improve” its training program. There are 22 full-time positions within OCR, five of which are military, but that likely is not enough to sufficiently handle the additional responsibilities related to the increased caseload, according to the report.
Although Booz Allen acknowledges that some of the recommendations listed in the report cannot be accomplished with the office’s $788,459 budget, OCR’s Web site says the recommendations are under review and lists some that have either already been completed or can be accomplished in the near future.
Those include:
• Restructuring the office to “optimize the use of our military personnel” and take advantage of existing training and resources.
• Analyze the workload to ensure statutory and non-statutory obligations are being met.
LaBrec said it is too early to determine what recommendations would require additional funding or how much additional money would be needed to accomplish those goals.
“The review reaffirmed many positive aspects of the Coast Guard civil rights program. The report also makes clear there is work ahead,” Dickerson wrote in Thursday’s Alcoast. “Foremost, consistent with past similar studies, the BAH team found we must restructure the [equal employment opportunity] function, and secondarily, shore up our equal employment opportunity/equal opportunity product lines so that they more optimally support our civil rights service providers and work force.”
LaBrec also said the 58 formal civil rights complains OCR received in fiscal year 2007, roughly one per 1,000 people, shows the office is doing some things right, since several of the other DHS departments have a much higher number of civil rights complaints per capita.
Allen told Coast Guard Academy cadets and faculty in October 2007 that racial bigotry will not be accepted and goes against the service’s ethos and humanitarian mission. In August 2008, he released a service-wide message outlining plans to improve diversity throughout the service.
As part of the new initiative, every flag officer and senior executive service member is required to attend one diversity conference a year and they are expected to build relationships with minority-based “institutions of higher education.”
The first noose, which garnered national attention, was left in the bag of a Black cadet in July 2007 onboard the Coast Guard cutter Eagle. The second was found in August on the office floor of a white female officer who had been conducting race relations training.
Not only Carmen Walker, but others in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have gone out of their way to protect the Coast Guard. Judging from what happen to Tony D'Armiento, a civilian employee of the U.S. Coast Guard, I would not advise Webster Smith to try to go into DHS Headquarters for a sit down face-to-face with Ms Walker. The hired help sound like they were recruited from Blackwater Security rejects. Blackwater is alleged to have wasted 17 Iraqi civilians on the streets without as much as a car back fire to justify the shoot-out at the Baghdad Corral. Consider the case of Tony D'Armiento as reported in the Washington Post Sunday, 16 December 2007.
A civilian U.S. Coast Guard employee was placed on paid administrative leave, threatened with a criminal investigation and confronted by guards at gunpoint in retaliation for disclosing information embarrassing to the service's troubled fleet replacement program, his attorney said.
Anthony D'Armiento, a former Northrop Grumman systems engineer working for the Coast Guard's acquisitions department, asked the Bush administration to appoint an independent inspector general to investigate his allegations against staff members of Richard L. Skinner, inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security. D'Armiento's attorney called their actions "an egregious act of intimidation and excessive force" against a government whistle-blower.
D'Armiento was placed on leave Oct. 1 and told to cooperate with Coast Guard investigators or face criminal prosecution, said Debra S. Katz, his attorney, in a letter to Skinner and the White House.
D'Armiento cooperated, but after he was told he could retrieve his office and home computers from Skinner's offices in Rosslyn on Oct. 29, Paul Weare, an investigator for the DHS inspector general, attempted to question D'Armiento. When D'Armiento refused to answer, three guards appeared, one pointed a gun at his chest, denied him his equipment and threatened him with arrest if he returned, Katz said.
"Mr. Weare was trying to lure Mr. D'Armiento to the OIG office where he could be further interrogated without his attorney present," Katz said in the letters, copies of which were obtained by The Washington Post. "This staged armed confrontation was an extreme and transparent act of retaliation against Mr. D'Armiento."
Skinner's office did not respond to repeated requests for a comment. A DHS official confirmed that D'Armiento is under investigation.
The Coast Guard said in a statement that "unauthorized disclosure or improper handling of sensitive, classified or proprietary information is strictly prohibited and may result in administrative or criminal charges."
Katz wrote that when D'Armiento declined to speak with Weare in an interrogation room and said, "I want my computer back now," Weare told him to "back off" and "get out of [his] face." After a guard drew his handgun, prompting D'Armiento to say he would call the police, a guard replied, "We are the police," Katz wrote.
Katz said that, on Sept. 25, D'Armiento turned over to a fellow whistle-blower Coast Guard documents marked sensitive but unclassified, and that the papers showed that the agency was aware of hundreds of defects in communications equipment aboard its new, $640 million flagship vessel, known as the National Security Cutter. The ship is part of the Coast Guard's $25 billion fleet replacement program, known as Deepwater.
In the documents, dated August and September and reported by Wired magazine's Web site, Coast Guard officials noted the probability that the first of eight planned cutters "will be unable to process classified information." Nevertheless, the Coast Guard appeared prepared to accept responsibility for correcting some defects at added taxpayer expense after delivery, even though that was the contractors' obligation, D'Armiento alleged.
Coast Guard officials called the criticism premature. They said the authorities were aware of the reported defects. "We're not going to accept [delivery of] a cutter with any kind of major problems," Coast Guard spokeswoman Laura Williams said.
The vessels are being built by Northrop Grumman with electronics provided by Lockheed Martin. The first cutter, the Bertholf, whose price tag has doubled since 2002 and whose delivery was delayed from August to April, is undergoing trials at sea. The second and third of eight planned ships are under contract, estimated to cost $500 million each.
The Coast Guard is also addressing design flaws that could lead to fatigue cracks well before the end of the first cutter's 30-year life span.
The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet,
8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used? Because that's the way they built them in England, and English expatriates built the US railroads.
Why did the English build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used.
Why did "they" use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.
Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England , because that's the spacing of the wheel ruts.
So who built those old rutted roads? Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (and England) for their legions. The roads have been used ever since.
And the ruts in the roads? Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.
Therefore the United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is
derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot.
Bureaucracies live forever.
So the next time you a re handed a Specification/ Procedure/ Process and
wonder "What horse's ass came up with it?" you may be exactly right.
Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the
rear ends of two war horses. (Two horses' asses.)
Now, an added twist to the story:
When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big
booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid
rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory in
Utah . The engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred to make them
a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to
the launch site. The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a
tunnel in the mountains, and the SRBs had to fit through that tunnel.The
tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as
you now know, is about as wide as two horses' behinds.
So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse's ass. And you thought being a horse's ass
wasn't such a big deal?
Ancient horse's asses control almost everything....and CURRENT Horses Asses
are controlling everything else!!
The U.S. Coast Guard Court of Criminal Appeals has scheduled oral arguments in the Case of The Appeal of the Court-martial Conviction of Cadet Webster Smith for January 16, 2008 in Arlington, Virginia.A legal brief filed by his lawyers claims the convictions should be thrown out because the defense team was not allowed to fully cross-examine one of his accusers during Smith's court martial. They say that meant the jury didn't hear testimony that the accuser, a female cadet, Shelly Roddenbush, had once had consensual sex with a Coast Guard enlisted man and then called it sexual assault.
Lt. Cmdr. Patrick M. Flynn, the government's lawyer for the appeal, said 27 November that the jury "heard enough" and the trial judge was within his rights to impose reasonable limits on the cross-examination.
"They didn't need to hear the additional details the defense is arguing they should have been allowed to hear."
The defense also is asking the court to set aside Smith's convictions on two lesser charges of failing to obey an order and abandoning watch.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces
450 E Street, Northwest
Washington, D.C. 20442-0001
SCHEDULED HEARINGS
United States v. Webster M. Smith, No. 08-0719/CG
(Appellee) (Appellant)
Counsel for Appellant: Ronald C. Machen, Esq.
Counsel for Appellee: LT Emily P. Reuter, USCG
Case Summary: GCM conviction of going from place of duty, attempting to disobey an order, sodomy, extortion, and indecent assault. Granted issue questions whether the military judge violated Appellant’s constitutional right to confront his accusers by limiting his cross-examination of [SR], the government’s only witness, on three of the five charges.
NOTE: Counsel for each side will be allotted 20 minutes to present oral argument in this case.
Labels: Discrimination Complaints.
posted by ichbinalj at 6:02 PM
12 Comments:
An Informed Party said: ""I can not tell you how disappointing it is to see the bold manipulation and the avoidance of the facts that has been communicated. The ridiculousness of the double talk and outright dismissal of the issues contained within the Coast Guard's own investigation results, is simply mind numbing. How are they able to justify this type of actions? Oh I forgot ...they do not have to.
There can be no justice without a will to review. Obviously within the government the circling of the wagons trumps the search for the truth."
Marvin Kierstead wrote: "My Name is Marvin Kierstead. I was recently
> guided to a blog posting of
>your's by my friend, Doug Genna. I found your thoughts on the witness, Shelly Raudenbush, of the Webster Smith case interesting and accurate in that I can confirm allegations about her past. Not
> only am I one of the Boys of Council Rock Class of 2002 which you wrote of, but I too am one of
> Shelly's high school boyfriends. After dating
> Shelly for the first few
> weeks during my senior year, I found that she had cheated on Doug with me at the start of our relationship. Since then, Doug and
> I have become friends. This act of infidelity on Shelly's part was not an isolated occurance. In
> fact, Doug's involvment with Shelly started as a result of her cheating on another friend of mine. My relationship with Shelly
> ended during the summer after our senior year of high school. As we went to different colleges,
> Shelly and I promised to stay faithful towards one another in continuing our relationship. It turned out that she took the
> first opportunity to betray me with a fellow Coast Guard Cadet. A close friend of Shelly's
> informed me of this and added that Shelly laughed about her infidelity and claimed she would do it again if given the chance.
I apologize for making this message as lenghty as it is, but I
> feel I should validate a claim that was stated in you blog. I enjoyed what you wrote, but cannot say it came as a suprise.
Thank you for your time.
Marvin Kierstead
Doug Genna wrote;
"Dear Sir,
I stumbled upon your blog, and comments on the Webster Smith article. I am going to be honest with you, Shelly Raudenbush and I grew up in Pennsylvania. Gradauted from Council Rock High school in 2002. She attended the Coast Guard academy. Shelly and I dated in high school, and she was not the most faithful of girlfriends, and I know of other guys she dated, whom she cheated on. So I was wondering if she was actually the other party involved in Cadet Smith's trial, especially since all other articles involving Webster Smith fail to mention her.
I assumed since Shelly Raudenbush isn't exactly a common name that it was the same person. Shelly did move to our school, when we were in elementary school. The Shelly that I know was very active with the track team.
I assure you I am not out for any kind of revenge, I am more or less just curious about an old acquaintance, and if she is a party to all of this, and what you say is true, then I have great sympathy for Mr. Smith.
Thank you for your time.
Regards,
Doug Genna
International Herald Tribune - France
(The Associated Press) WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2007
Lawyers for a former cadet who was the first student court-martialed in the 130-year history of the U.S. Coast Guard Academy's are seeking to reverse his convictions for sexual misconduct.
Thomas Jackson, a North Carolina college professor and Civil Rights leaders, wrote : I was recently asked to comment on the Coast Guard Academy Noose incidents on several blogs, and sometimes I just write something worth sharing on my own blog.
"The noose story is not the epicenter of Coast Guard Civil Rights issues. Equal Civil Rights are the story. The Coast Guard must and we think they will come to terms with this issue and others confronting the service. Leadership is the key to unlocking binds that hold progress in Equal Civil Rights back. Admiral Thad Allen is searching for the key with all his energy, but his staff expends ten times the energy hiding the key in a new location each time he gets close. We continue to follow the story of one brave civil servant in the employee of Admiral’s Allen’s Coast Guard. In standing up for what was right, and just and certainly would have been equal application of Civil Rights this employee has experienced the very wrath of reprisal and discrimination. As he continues to stand for what it right, we will continue to support him. A great man once said:
“He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Our man is holding on to the dream and not passively accepting defeat."
TJ
The Coast Guard is in all sorts of trouble, with ships that are falling apart, replacement vessels that are over-budget and malfunctioning, and allegations that Coast Guardsmen have been mistreating civilian boaters. Now the 200,000-strong American Federation of Government Employees is actively courting those of the Coast Guard's roughly 7,000 civilian workers who aren't already union members.
Is it a good idea for a Coastie civie to go union? Consider one case study.
In 2007 a Coast Guard civilian, Anthony D'Armiento, leaked key, unclassified documents related to the troubled, $25-billion Deepwater modernization scheme.
The Coast Guard Inspector General's Office flipped when they discovered the leak, as The Washington Post reported:
D'Armiento was placed on leave Oct. 1 and told to cooperate with Coast Guard investigators or face criminal prosecution, said Debra S. Katz, his attorney, in a letter to Skinner and the White House. D'Armiento cooperated, but after he was told he could retrieve his office and home computers from Skinner's offices in Rosslyn on Oct. 29, Paul Weare, an investigator for the DHS inspector general, attempted to question D'Armiento. When D'Armiento refused to answer, three guards appeared, one pointed a gun at his chest, denied him his equipment and threatened him with arrest if he returned, Katz said. ...
Katz wrote that when D'Armiento declined to speak with Weare in an interrogation room and said, "I want my computer back now," Weare told him to "back off" and "get out of [his] face." After a guard drew his handgun, prompting D'Armiento to say he would call the police, a guard replied, "We are the police," Katz wrote.
So should Coastie civilians unionize? If unions mean more protection against this kind of behavior, then yes, they are in great need of protection from arbitrary power tripping cowboys.
Beverly Herbert said: "I attended the Easter service at Connecticut College and was glad that I did. I was pleasantly surprised at the positive message by the former-Gov. John G. Rowland in which he spoke of his journey from the high to the low and how faith brought him through.
I know many people think of John Rowland as the worst governor ever. However, during his administration I remember writing to him and actually getting an answer and getting the issue addressed. Also, I remember when calling the governor's office that his staff was always courteous, gracious, knowledgeable and helpful.
Many people seem to want to make the former governor the poster boy for political corruption in Connecticut.
Making him the poster boy can no more solve the problem of political corruption in Connecticut than making Webster Smith the poster boy for all the sexual misconduct and abuse that had gone on at the Coast Guard Academy for years without anyone being held accountable.
Beverly Herbert
The Coast Guard Court of Criminal Appeals by a narrow margin has made the wrong decision for the wrong reason. They have left the Sixth Amendment to the U S Constitution in shreds. By a majority of 2-1, they voted against Webster Smith. Only one member of the Appellate Court was able to see clearly the errors made by the Trial Court. There will be much said about this decision in the future.
It was January 2007 in an interview with Defense News that Admiral Thad Allen made his now famous among bloggers statement ,
“Anybody that’s ever worked for me knows that one of the axioms of my life is that transparency of information breeds self-correcting behavior. It is one of the principles I live by … going forward, transparency will be a capstone of my tenure as commandant.”
Given what we and the American people have seen, that statement seems a bit hypocritical at this point. Allen has not made a single stride towards transparency on issue before him in the press. From the failures of Deepwater to his own Civil Rights Office, there is and has been no transparency.
Because of this the Coast Guard has seen an incestuous breeding of secrecy, lies, half truths, and an absolute lack of Honor, Respect and Devotion to Duty. Whistle Blowing in the Coast Guard has moved to the internet because employees who value Coast Guard core values must hide in fear of those who do not. Those who do the right the thing and report fraud, waste and abuse are punished and fired. This has never been more so evident in the history of federal government than it is in the Coast Guard Office of Civil Rights today.
I would assume that Admiral Allen has at least asked Vice Admiral Papp the Coast Guard Chief of Staff what’s going on in Dickerson’s office. Any excuse given by Papp would suffice for one; two or three resignations in the span of several months, but over a dozen very senior civil service employees should get the Commandant’s attention. If anyone thinks that the Homeland Security Inspector General will look at this or Deepwater with both eyes open, please think again.
(Thomas Jackson)
Homeland Security Leads Government in Unhappy Employees
Coast Guard Office of Civil Rights leads Federal Government in Resignations
In a report by By Eileen Sullivan with AP we learn that it's not just U.S. Coast Guard employees who are unhappy, it's Department wide at Homeland Security.
"Homeland Security Department employees mostly are an unhappy lot. An internal survey of about 141,000 of the department's 208,000 employees found that only 58 percent were satisfied with their jobs, the same as results from a 2006 survey that measured job satisfaction across the government."
Homeland Security bottomed out at ... well the bottom of the 2006 poll of employees conducted by the Office of Personnel Management.
"91 percent of the people who work at the department think the work they do isimportant, only 54 percent would recommend the department as a good place to
work, says Sullivan.
This does not surprise many inside the Coast Guard, and certainly none of the employees who have left Coast Guard Civil Rights since Terri A. Dickerson came to the agency in 2006.
(TJ)
This entry was posted by cgreports.wordpress.com on June 11, 2009 at 6:26 pm and is filed under Uncategorized.
QUOTE: "We were notified today that Webster Smith, the first cadet to ever be courts-martialed at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy has had his site blocked by the U.S. Coast Guard. Smiths website “Friends of Webster” is not accessible inside the Coast Guard domain. We reviewed the site and couldn’t find anything in our cursory review that would warrant being blocked."
UNQUOTE
See-http://cgreport.wordpress.com/2009/06/11/webster-smith-former-u-s-coast-guard-academy-cadet-blocked-inside-coast-guard-domain/
Post a Comment
<< Home