You shouldn’t say the following things if you are drunk, a City-County Councilor, and have just said, “Do you know who I am!??!”: The following is a summary of the police report. You can verify this by reading the police report here. (Not edited for language. Names of other suspects, DOB, Addresses, and other sensitive information edited out.)

Three IMPD officers have arrived at a west side residence. They see Doris Minton-McNeil in the front yard.

 ”I’ve got a pedophile in my house, and I just want him out! You need to go in and get him out!” McNeil yelled. Before entering a house to arrest someone that had a knife, the police wisely wanted to know whom they were chasing. The Councilor became indignant.

“That Mother F^&ker is a pedophile, and I called him out on it! And he got a knife, and he tried to cut me!” She then approached one of the officers, who had not yet spoken to her.

“You are an arrogant Mother F&%ker, and so is he,” McNeil yelled. She walked to another officer and stated, “I’ll talk to him, because he’s the only one not being arrogant.” The officer pressed her for more information on the pedophile. She started yelling again.

“You’re arrogant, and I don’t like you. You ain’t here to help me. You are a racist Mother F%$ker like all the rest!” She then asked, “What district are you from?!” She began asking for their Major, or Commanding Officer. They then searched the house, finding no one. They asked her where he was, and she yelled again.

“You Mother F%$kers are going to get this guy out of my house!” They continued wandering through the house, and she kept asking about their superiors. The officers could not find anyone. Without provocation, McNeil started yelling angrily again.

“You guys are a bunch of racist Mother F%$kers! You ain’t here to help!” Councilor McNeil wandered to the back of the house, while the officers were in the front of the house. She began yelling, so the officers ran back to check on her. When they reached her, she was fine. She was fumbling around with her City-Council business cards. She tried to give them to the officers. She became irate when the officers refused the cards. McNeil pushed the first officer in the chest that had refused her card. The officer (Officer Emily Perkins) fell, and hit her hand on the side of the house. The other two officers ran to Officer Perkin’s assistance. McNeil was ordered to put her hands behind her back.

“No! You can’t arrest me! I’m on the City-County Council.” McNeil began to yell out the names of city officials that the officers needed to contact. (Wouldn’t you love to hear that list? Leave guesses in the comments.) McNeil resisted being cuffed. She twisted her body, and moved her arms, to avoid being cuffed.

“All the white officers on this f%$kin department are racists!” McNeill yelled. “I’m not going to be arrested.”  She then tried to break free again, causing her to be put in wrist restraints. She continued to yell about various city officials that should be contact. The officer assured her that their supervisors were on the way.

The officers smelled booze. Asked if she had been drinking, she replied, “I haven’t been drinking, I’ve only had two margaritas.” She asked to take a breath test. When the officer presented her with the test, she changed her mind.

“I changed my mind. I ain’t taking no test cause I ain’t drunk. “

She was loaded in to the wagon, and taken to lock-up. The report says that when she was taken out of the wagon, she “had urinated in her pants, and in the wagon.”

–30-

After reading this, is there any way that she can continue on the council? A lesson for all of those in public service: You are here to serve the public. We are not here to serve you, and you are not superior to those you serve.

Read the Police report here (Not edited for language. Names of other suspects, DOB, Addresses, and other sensitive information edited out.):

http://wxnt.radiotown.com/DorisMcNeilIMPDArrestDoc.pdf

 Listen to the 911 call here:

http://wxnt.radiotown.com/Doris%20McNeil_911_Call_Trad.mp3

New blog alert… Pastor, Social and Tax Activist, Community Organizer, and Friend of the Show Reverend Ajabu.

http://ajabuspeaks.squarespace.com/

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The passing of Tim Russert is a sad event in American Government. The media’s job is to challenge politicians on their words. No one does that better then Tim Russert. In fact, few do what Russert did. We are entering a dangerous age of journalism, and therefore, politics and government.

The pace of media has quickened. I am in radio, so you’d think that all I’d need to do is confer with sources and read as much as possible to prepare for the show. But as we enter this age, I need to write blogs, post podcasts, record and edit video. They all have to be different, and the content needs to be fresh. All of this takes time. It takes time to create, organize and promote YouTube, MySpace, and Facebook pages. It takes time to map things out, write out bits, record and edit them. The uploading takes forever.  But it all is necessary because other news outlets do it. You have to compete to remain relevant.

There are less people to do these things, because the media business sucks. A reporter, radio personality, or TV producer has more and more to do. As a result of all of this, the more time a media person spends on the content delivery, the more watered down the content becomes.  The pay is shrinking, so the quality of person behind the reports is lessened.

Today’s media will have less time to prepare for interviews. There are fewer reporters with less time to ask hard questions.

Because of the large amount of work to do, and the amount of information to process, many members of the media choose the angle of the story based on their conversations with the other members of the media, not the subject of the story. That is why you hear the same story angle in almost every major media’s (TV, Newspaper, Radio) report. The reporters all fish for a good sound bite. Some members of the local media don’t like that Abdul and I play the entire press conference. Guess Why? It exposes the lack of tough questions, and shows the fishing they do.

The subject (Politician, Movie Star, Sports Figure) are happy to oblige because they want to get on with their life. They don‘t need to prepare for any sort of tough question, because the reporters will all ask the same thing. They just need different versions of the sound bite. If they flip-flop, who cares! The reporters won’t notice, and the listener/reader/viewer is too busy to care.

So you turn to blogs and other forms of “new media” for a different point of view. They are advocates for their cause, and tailor their information to the message.

In fact, Advocacy Journalism will start to dominate the old media because it’s different. There is something that resembles humanity in their reporting. It doesn’t insult the listener/reader/viewer’s intelligence.

I’ll let you comment on the end result of all of this. (Actually, aren’t we seeing it? Isn’t our government dramatically failing us?)

Tim Russert was loved because he was a human being. He didn’t insult the viewer’s intelligence. He was prepared. He was everything a journalist should be, and something modern media should aspire to be.

Ronald Reagan did not believe in third parties. He believed that a person should choose a party that most closely identifies with a person’s beliefs and values. For myself, that is the Republicans. But what happens when a party loses its way? The Republican sins of big government are too numerous to mention for the last eight years. The largest sin is hypocrisy. Because while they commit their sins, they admonish and preach.

Ths occurs in two ways:

1. Larry Craig, Mark Foley, and David Vitter. Enough said.

2. “We are the party of limited government.” Then they vote on every spending bill they possibly can. Bush did not veto a bill until it was time to protect the unborn.

Then came Ron Paul. A person who walks the walk in addition to talking the talk. But because he opposes the war, he is considered a radical and his supporters kooks. But many Classic Liberals, Libertarians, and thinking Conservatives flocked to his message. They are hungry for their party to actually do what it says.

Freedom is the buzz word of the Bush administration and the current Republican Party.

But try to open debate on the party platform or the party talking points, and you are immediately shut down. Try to vote for a candidate that is not the party’s chosen candidate, and they will remove you ability to make that choice. Delegate status removed. Party Chairmen replaced. Rules illegally changed.

Freedom.

So what is a grassroots or regular member of a party supposed to do when their party loses its way? There are a couple of things they can do. A member of a party is punish it by sitting out elections. Large-Scale losses in a party cause a purging of the establishment. When John Kerry lost big in 2004, many of the Clinonistas were tossed out of the DNC. They were replaced by the more radical Howard Dean section of the party.

Or they can switch to a third-party. To you disillusioned Republicans, take a look at the Libertarians. There are more of us moving to a party that actually will practice what it preaches. Third-Parties aren’t as much fun as the big two. There is not as much free pizza, the signs are not as flashy, and the T-Shirts aren’t as nice. But maybe democracy and good government are not about those things.

P.S. The Democrats have the same shenanigans going on.

I’ve been sent an account that sheds some light on a few different issues at the Republican Convention this past Monday. First, the changing of the delegate election rules to keep Ron Paul sleepers from being delegates to the National Convention. The other was why Greg Zoeller was chosen over Jon Costas. I will post a second post with my thoughts.

This is from a Republican Delegate from South Bend named Eric Rowe:

I was one of around 400 conservative Republicans who had been involved in the Ron Paul campaign who attended this year’s Indiana Republican primary as a delegate (out of a total of 1900+ in attendance). We went intending to make sure that there was a conservative voice there representing the values of limited government and constitutionalism that Ron Paul champions. We called ourselves The Conservative Republican Statesmen Caucus (hereafter, CRSC), a group which we hope will continue to have a role in Indiana politics.

We began planning for this event months in advance, getting active in and working to prove our value to our county parties, recruiting members, organizing ourselves, and carefully studying the rules of the national and Indiana Republican committees.

One of our goals was to make an honest effort to send members of the CRSC as delegates to the Republican National Convention, where we could continue to deepen our influence in the party. The delegate slots we would have been most likely to fill, if any, would have been as congressional district delegates who would attend as delegates bound by the rules to vote for John McCain, and thus would have no potential to cause any trouble to the nomination process. The only way any of our group would have been able to go in that capacity would have been by winning a majority vote in our district caucuses, where we were outnumbered more than 3 to 1. Despite all of this, the leaders of our state GOP took deliberate steps to make sure we did not have a role in our caucuses other than as yes men for them, and they broke their own party rules to do so.

According to rule 15(e)(1) of the Republican National Committee, every state party was required to adopt their procedure for selecting delegates to the Republican National Convention by the 2nd Tuesday of last September (see here: http://www.gop.com/About/Rules11-20.htm ). The rules for the state party of Indiana have been available on their official website, at least since I began to inquire into this whole process months ago. They always said that nominations for delegates to the national convention would be accepted from the floor of our caucuses and that the meetings would follow Robert’s Rules of Order. That is until the day before our state convention, where we found a revised set of rules where the former ones had been. According to the website, the revisions to the rules were made on May 30th, 3 days before our convention, and long after the national party’s required deadline for adopting procedures for delegate selection (see esp. the note stating the day of the revisions and rule 9-31 here: http://www.indgop.org/rulesrevision06.pdf

). The revised rules stated that the district committee would preselect a slate of all the delegates and alternate delegates that they want representing their district at the national convention, and that this entire slate would be elected by a simple up or down vote in the district caucus without nominations from the floor.

We were fortunate to have noticed this illegal change of procedure in time to come up with the appropriate way to address it according to Robert’s Rules. In my district, the 2nd, one of the other members of the CRSC stood up to request a point of information immediately after the speaker asked someone to move that we vote on their slate of delegates. He was going to request that the speaker state for all of the delegates in the room what the basis in the rules was for voting for his pre-selected slate of delegates, and when the rule governing that procedure was adopted. Doing this would ensure that all of the delegates in the room were aware that they were trying to follow a rule they had just cooked up last week. After that information would have been given, I was going to make a point of order stating that the national committee rules required that we follow the procedure that was adopted prior to the second Tuesday of last September. Then another CRSC member was going to move that nominations be accepted from the floor, at which point in time we hoped that enough of the delegates present would agree with us that the original rules should be followed that the majority would vote along with us on that motion. Had that happened, there were two CRSC members whom we were planning to nominate. Speaking only for myself, I intended to vote for one of those two individuals, an older gentleman with years of active participation in the party whose politeness is only surpassed by his convictions, and I intended not to vote for the other one. Quite frankly, I have my doubts that either one of them would have won, but I see no reason that they shouldn’t have been given a chance.

Eric Rowe

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=16140037814

Indiana has the pleasure of actually mattering in this Election year. Earlier in the month, Barack Obama visited Plainfield High School. Hillary Clinton visited Ben Davis High School this past Saturday. WXNT producer Chris Spangle covered both and here are his impressions:

Both gyms are of equal size. Both Schools opened space for overflow. Senator Obama filled the entire gym and the auxillary gym used for overflow two hours before the event. Senator Clinton did not have anyone in the auditorium used for overflow. She did not fill the entire main gym. There were at least 50 seats empty out. I’d estimate that 3,000 showed up for Obama, and 2,000 for Clinton.

Both candidates brought a proportionate amount of Indianapolis’s ethnic make-up. There were members of all races, colors, creeds, and religions at these events. Economically, Obama brought more middle-class and upper-class listeners. Clinton had more working-class and union members.

Crowd Reaction: Both crowds were very enthusiastic for their candidate. Surprisingly, Hillary’s crowd cheered more intensely. Could be the building, but they were louder and more fervent. The crowd leaving Obama’s event was more positive on the Senator, and more upbeat. I heard a mixed reaction from the crowd exiting Clinton’s event. Some were inspired, some were calling B.S.

Message: Obama was more a message of hope and unity. It was meant to inspire. Hillary’s was more intellectual. The speech was mostly that the G.O.P. has left the country a disaster, and asking the crowd to remember how wonderful it was under her husband. The job will be hard, but she is the only one to fix it. Obama was more upbeat, saying that while we have problems, they aren’t anything Americans can’t overcome. I won’t say Clinton wasn’t positive, but I did have a looming sense of doom if I didn’t take her advice and elect her.

Campaign Staff: The Obama event was very structured. Press had to register online the day before. Clinton had open press. Obama had three press agents there greeting the press, helping them set up. They also had student ambassadors to keep the press in their spot, and to assist with questions about the school. The two or three hours that I was there, I didn’t meet one member of the Clinton team. No one introduced themselves or asked if I needed assistance. Now, in fairness, the Clinton Camp is doing a lot of stops in a short amount of time, which needs a lot of logistical support and planning. That could have been why there seemed to be a lack of staff wandering around.

P.S.  Superdelegate Andre Carson spent a few moments with Barack Obama when he visited earlier this month. He also attended Obama’s speech. Congressman Carson was not present at Senator Clinton’s speech.

I am taking some heat because I defended Beth White this morning. I remember hanging around the Election warehouse during the counting of the Scott Keller ballots (who won by 3 in a recount in 2003), and watching Doris Anne Sadler cry because of the shady dealings of Ed Treacy and his crowd. We can debate all that some other time, let’s focus on this election day. Most polling places opened on time, and fairly smoothly. There were about half a dozen polling places that did not open on time, but were operational after an hour. I would say that is a pretty successful election. Why? Let me share a note I recieved this morning:
Chris:
It’s chivalrous  of you to defend Beth White in stating that she can’t be responsible for many of the snafus of this morning-such as the individual poll workers not showing up. I beg to differ.  As Abdul commented, she is responsible.  It is her job to make sure that those working for her-election office workers, party and township officials, down to precinct committeemen and poll workesr, all understand their duties and make sure that they and those under them, are ready to fulfill them.
Why were ballots missing when other supplies were available?  That should have been noted and reported last night when inspectors prepared their voting locations, and taken care of by this a.m.  Poll workers didn’t show up?  Each committeeman, having been prodded by their ward chair, who was prodded by their township chair, etc., etc. should have been making phone calls the night before, had contingency plans for last minute problems,etc.
Buildings weren’t open?  Calls are made not once, but twice, to make sure that keys for buildings are available or emergency phone numbers for building supervisors are known.
The magnitude and type of the voting problems under Beth White’s term are avoidable and are being repeated. Yes, we all make mistakes and some are out of our control.  But this should be the absolute last time that any excuses or defense can be made of Beth White and her organizational abilities.
Christine

——
I agree that perfection should always be the goal, but this is an imperfect science. Beth White once promised perfection as the clerk, and has not delivered. The GOP candidate for her job in the next cycle will promise a perfect election, and if elected, will not achieve it. I am not saying that these mistakes are ok or right, I am just trying to be realistic. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to organize a few hundred volunteers, but it’s like herding cats.  Anything is better then last May.
Chris

Welcome back to this blog. We finally have a slick look, and easy to use interface for these blogs. I look forward to posting some interesting stuff.

Let’s get started. In the comments section, please ask me a question. It can either be about WXNT, Abdul, the show, or myself. Anything you’ve ever been curious about when it comes to the show. Thanks!