Monday updates

Let’s follow up on some stories from the past.

First up – thebesig just did a story about some Washington, D.C. area servers and waitstaff who announced their intention to give lousy service to incoming administration people. One laudable result:

“I personally would refuse to serve any person in office who I know of as being a sex trafficker or trying to deport millions of people,” Suzannah Van Rooy, a server at Beuchert’s Saloon on Capitol Hill, told the Washingtonian this week.

Ms. Van Rooy need no longer worry. Beuchert’s fired her.

“Recent comments made by a member of staff who had no authority to speak on behalf of our entire restaurant have been, quite rightly, flagged as inappropriate, hostile, intolerant, and unacceptable. This staff member does NOT speak for us as a restaurant,” Beuchert’s initial statement on Thursday said.   Fox News

Yes, you can say what you want. Yes, there may be consequences.

I am sure folks here remember the Duke University lacrosse team members who were accused of rape back in 2006? An exotic dancer name of Crystal Mangum claimed she was assaulted at a party she was working, and national headlines were made. Eventually the over-zealous DA was disbarred, their coach was fired, you KNOW those boys have been followed by it for almost two decades. And  – she lied.

Although they were indicted after the incident, in the end, there was no trial.

Seligmann, Finnerty and Evans (the accused – ed.) were exonerated of the charges in April 2007 — a year after the alleged attack — after the state’s then-Attorney General Roy Cooper (who took over the case in January of that year) reviewed it and declared that the charges never should have been brought against them, per CNN.

Then there is the fact that, while she had been raped and abused and a rape kit confirmed it, the evidence recovered from her did not match the accused – and the DA somehow failed to mention that. Big oops there.   Reportedly this cost Duke $20,000,000 in settlement.

Sadly, Ms. Mangum is currently serving time for second degree murder of her boyfriend and is not likely to be punished further for ruining all these lives.

Former Coast Guard Commandant Karl Schultz says he withheld the “Fouled Anchor” sexual harassment investigation at the Coast Guard Academy to protect the victims and keep member of Congress from making it a political football (perhaps a sensitive word after Saturday’s upset?)

In his first public statements since the scandal broke, Schultz said he knew if he had presented the findings to Congress, lawmakers would have seen it as a political opportunity. He said the way Congress is responding now is evidence he was right.

“I knew they would see it as, ‘Here’s the scandal and that they would blow it up,’” said Schultz, who retired in 2022. In his view, lawmakers would have pressed for more information, which ultimately would have been leaked publicly and harmed the victims and some alleged perpetrators who had been exonerated by the investigation. Providing them an overview of the findings, he said, “wouldn’t have been the end of it.”

He also said he did not believe he was under any legal obligation to share the findings with Congress, noting that the agency would not typically brief lawmakers on criminal cases.

After CNN broke the story, Congress decided to investigate (and used it as a political football.) Tehre is one amusing quote from the mess:

House Oversight Committee member Raja Krishnamoorthi, a Democratic Congressman from Illinois, called Schultz’s reasoning for withholding the report from Congress “absurd.”

Krishnamoorthi strongly disputed the idea that victims’ identities would have been compromised had Schultz shared the findings with Congress.

“We are handling the sensitive information of government personnel all the time, and there are ways to do it,” he said.  CNN II

May be, but Congress seems to not KNOW those ways.

Category: "Your Tax Dollars At Work", Coast Guard, Congress sucks, Crime